Photoshop Elements help

[jetmechG550]

Wondering if any of you guys are guru's with Photoshop Elements. Basically the cheap version of Adobe Photoshop. I have versions 2 & 3. I'm trying to find some info or tips on how to do a few things, the main one being if you take a photo in Black & White and say someone in the photo is holding a flower or a pumpkin. How would you tint just the pumpkin or flower so only it had color? I can do it in Picasa but it's sort of half assed cause you use a focal and set the size but it doesn't always look as good. My wife is the one wondering and she's driving me nuts trying to figure it out. Anyway, any direction would be appreciated!

 

[rocknbil]

Use the lasso tool to select the object you want to stay color. Where the focus begins to fade, set the lasso tool feather to a pixel width that is approximately the width of the focus. That is, as an object gets fuzzier, set the feather to more and more pixels.

So you select the "hard edges" with 0 feather, then change the feather value of the lasso tool, hold down the shift key to ADD to that selection and select the fuzzy unfocussed areas. To REMOVE from the selection, hold down the alt key, start selecting the areas you want to remove, and release the alt key.

You could use the magic want here but it makes for crappy selections.

The selection's the big deal. Once you have it selected, go to the select menu and Select Inverse, now you have all the area that's NOT the flower selected. Now go into Image menu and select hue/saturation. Move the slider to the left and watch the image. By desaturating all the colors, you'll set the rest of the image to a grayscale looking tone.

Been a while since I've been in Elements so you'll have to find all the right menus and where to set the tool feather, but that will work.

 

[Plaidfish]

you should be able to set the tolerance the wand is reading to a higher or lower setting.....it basically takes a percentage of the main color you select and anything touching your main color w/in that percentage will also be selected.....

 

[jetmechG550]

Hey cool, thanks for the info! Now to get home and try it out! I appreciate it fellas.

 

[rocknbil]

you should be able to set the tolerance the wand is reading to a higher or lower setting.....it basically takes a percentage of the main color you select and anything touching your main color w/in that percentage will also be selected.....

Yeah but it always gives you a really screwy selection that you have to go touch up anyway, and always manages to bring in something you didn't want. If you want to select by color a better method is to go to Select -> Color Range, then click the first color. Then in the color range window, select the eyedropper with the + next to it, and click-and-hold over the rest of the color range, it will add to the first click and smooth out the errant pixels. When you close out of that window it helps to go to Select -> Smooth and enter 1 or 2 pixels to smooth out the selection a bit.

 

[Plaidfish]

I don't really get into photo editing much but I do create picture like stuff of mechanical equipment.....I Know who I'm coming to ask for help next time I need some....

 

[rocknbil]

^ ^ LOL . . sure man NP. I used to work in desktop publishing - in fact I set up and laid out the DTP department for a large printing company, down to flying to LA and picking out their drum scanner and imagesetter - for years all I did was color work and retouching, making crappy photos look good. Well, printable anyway.

 

[FastEddy]

Plug,,,,
I have 1 unit left in stock of PhotoShop Elements V1.
29.99 shipped in the lower 48. Original price 99.99

 

[LesWV]

Jet
You mean to take a photo like this.

And do something like this.

Here is how I do it.

Open the photo

Using the Brush effect.. Size 128 .. Tint Black at 100 Opacity

Using the Brush effect.. Normal .. I like the effects of using "Normal" better than "Colorize". Choose the color that you wish to make the object.

It helps to zoom the photo to show as much of the object that you wish to color in the window as possible once tinted to the desired color or effect.

Adjust the Brush size to inside of the smallest part of the object.

Adjust the Opacity to around 20% to start. If it does give the desired depth/color tint. Move up the Opacity 5% until you get the effect you are looking for.
Ctrl and Z at the same time will undo what you just did.

Once you start. Try not to stop the brush until finished. For each overlapped brush stroke will make the overlap darker.


I like to use a feathered brush. Which on my program is the third and forth bursh from the top left of the "bush chooser window" as DD calls it.

Hope that it helps you somewhat. I put it as simple as I could in hopes that it would be easy to follow the steps.

Remember Ctrl + Z = Mistakes undone.

Another little tip. When you first open a photo. Hit File, Save As and add something to the end of the photo, Hit Save. That way you will have of the same photo. The orignal and the one that you are working on to use for comparing the org to the new.
Example are the photos above. One named "Piggy" the other "Piggy3333" or something like that.

 

[jetmechG550]

Yeah that's it, I just haven't had time to sit down and mess with it since you guys replied! Thanks to all!

 

[Tweak]

Wow, Les, That is a really awesome job. You mind if I steal that picture for my desktop?

 

[LesWV]

Tweak
I did that in about 2 minutes just to show as an example. If you look close you can see all of the places that I did not colorize on the fenders.

Take the [/b]photo[/b] if you wish. Just leave my real Piggy in the living room if you you dont want shot... :sniper: :moped: