Making Selections Digital Darkroom Assignment for the Week: 5/7-5/14

cletus

This week's assignment: Making Selections

Use the photo editing software of your choice to make selections in an image and use the selections to manipulate the image in some way.


Practice Images
Your photo editing software provides a number of tools for making selections. Each of these tools will have strengths and weaknesses. Part of becoming proficient at making selections is knowing which tool to use for which job.

Rectangles and Circles
Rectangular and circular selections are building blocks for many photo editing tasks. In fact, your photo editing software has tools just for making rectangular and circular (or elliptical) selections.

Instructions

1. Save the image below to your computer (you can click on the image to get a larger version of it)
2. Open the file in your photo editing software
3. Use the rectangular and elliptical selection tools to select one of the shapes on the left side of the image
4. Move (or copy) the shape to the right side of the image
5. Repeat steps 3 & 4 for the other shapes

Notes:

• Try to make your selections as precise as possible. You may not be able to get them perfect, but try to get them as close as you can!
• The circle and ellipse will be tough. Look in the help for your photo editing software for information on elliptical selections.
• The last shape is the same as the second shape, but it has been rotated. Try to find a way to make a selection and then rotate it.

Straight Sided Selections
More than likely your photo editing software has a tool for making selections with straight sides (polygons). In Photoshop & Photoshop Elements this tool is the Polygonal Lasso Tool. In Paint Shop Pro the tool is called the Free Hand Selection Tool (make sure that Selection Type is set to Point to Point in the option bar).


Instructions:

1. Save the image below to your computer (you can click on the image to get a larger version of it)
2. Open the file in your photo editing software
3. Use the polygon selection tool to select one of the shapes on the left side of the image
4. Move (or copy) the shape to the right side of the image
5. Repeat steps 3 & 4 for the other shape

cletus

Original:


Bye, bye blue sky!


hello black space-sky!

Thwack

Rotating the selection for the last piece of the first picture was a challenge but I managed (then had to repair a chunk of the white that moved while rotating the selection).

I used PhotoStudio for Mac OS X because it was free (used to be available on iDisk under member software).

I haven't tried the second practice yet or applied the lessons to a real picture. Your example of replacing sky with night is pretty cool so it's well worth learning how to do this stuff.

wxwax

Another great tutorial and assignment.

cletus

Thwack wrote:

Rotating the selection for the last piece of the first picture was a challenge but I managed (then had to repair a chunk of the white that moved while rotating the selection).

I used PhotoStudio for Mac OS X because it was free (used to be available on iDisk under member software).

I haven't tried the second practice yet or applied the lessons to a real picture. Your example of replacing sky with night is pretty cool so it's well worth learning how to do this stuff.

Great job Thwack

Thwack

cletus wrote:

Great job Thwack

Thanks, teach!

I viewed the original at 300% and used a trackball to get precise pointer positioning while selecting. Made it much easier.

wxwax

I cheated making the selections. Took maybe 10 seconds each. 2 clicks, 3 on one of them.

wxwax

I'm ashamed of myself for messing around. Here it is, done per the challenge. And by doing it the right way, I learned how to use the Marquee tool to do acccurate circular/oval selections. Made me go to the book, you did.

Thwack

OK, here's part 2...pretty easy since the shapes have nice straight lines...just click point to point to point and double-click at the end to make the last connection.

Working at 200% made it simpler. I'm at home now on a laptop and don't have enough screen space to do 300% like the first part.

I played a bit with the last shape...using the rotate trick learned in part 1, but doing it cleaner. I moved the copy of the selected shape to its own layer, then rotated it. That avoided having a chunk of the background affected while playing around (like I had in part 1).

wxwax

Thwak, I found that simply by hitting Control-C and then Control-V the copy would automagically be pasted on a new layer. The I used the Move tool to drag it to its new home. As I did that for each object, I ended up with many layers. When doing the drop shadows, I discovered that sometimes I wasn't allowed to do just one layer. That was when I did the drop shadows from the bottom layer to the top. But when I did them the other way around, no problem. Dunno why, but it worked.

Thwack

Copy/Paste puts the pasted piece in a new layer in PhotoStudio as well but it's Apple-C/Apple-V for me.

Why is there a Windows key on Windows machine yet that key isn't needed for most keyboard commands...

I flatted all the layers when I was done but having each rotated weird shaped piece in its own layer made it trivial adjust their position repeatedly until I had what I wanted, then flatten. Probably could skip the flatten step but it's "neater" this way.

I did something similar last night with a picture of Linzi but the results were posted in a PUI thread and don't really fit the theme here.

Thwack

Part 3....
Time to apply what I learned to a real picture. Here's the "before" shot:




And here's the "after" shot:



Is the change too subtle?

I had to rotate the beak slightly after selecting it and pasting it into a new layer. Then I had to scale it up a bit to cover the real nose.

Covering the original beak with the human nose was harder. I had to paint out lots of the original beak since the nose was such a different size/shape and extend the arm of the glasses through where the beak used to be. It's a hack/rush job but it mostly works...

wxwax

wxwax

Thwack wrote:

Time to apply what I learned to a real picture. Here's the "before" shot:




And here's the "after" shot:



Is the change too subtle?

wxwax

Thwack wrote:

Why is there a Windows key on Windows machine yet that key isn't needed for most keyboard commands...

The only time I use it is "Windows Key + E" which tales me to the File exchange window. Dunno what else to call it - the file menu's on the left, and in the right pane are the files for any folder you click on. Makes it easy to move stuff around.

Thwack

wxwax wrote:

The only time I use it is "Windows Key + E" which tales me to the File exchange window. Dunno what else to call it - the file menu's on the left, and in the right pane are the files for any folder you click on. Makes it easy to move stuff around.

Probably "E" for "Explorer" (not to be confused with "Internet Explorer").

wxwax

Yes, I believe that's right.

hutchman

I did not realize that I was using the assignment for the week when screwing around with one of DD's images.


The original, which is my favorite of his post!



After some work in Photoshop -



Hutch

cletus

hutchman wrote:

I did not realize that I was using the assignment for the week when screwing around with one of DD's images.


The original, which is my favorite of his post!



After some work in Photoshop -



Hutch

cletus

Hutch... I stole your idea!

hutchman

Woo Hoo! I like it!

Nice work with the healing brush/clone tool!

Hutch

cletus

hutchman wrote:

Woo Hoo! I like it!

Nice work with the healing brush/clone tool!

Hutch

Acutally I didn't use either.

1. Made the circular selection
2. Copied the lamp (including the base) onto a new layer
3. Made a copy of the new layer
4. Rotated the copy 180°
5. Erased the copy except for where it covered the base
6. Lowered the opacity of the copy a bit

hutchman

There sure are a bunch of ways to skin a cat!

Thwack

hutchman wrote:

There sure are a bunch of ways to skin a cat!

If you adjust the opacity of the cat's skin to the proper setting, you can make the cat appear to be skinned even though it actually hasn't been skinned...

GREAPER

I am very much a beginer so I dont ussually do well at manipulations, but i try every assignment. This one happened to be just what I needed for a smal project.

A friend invited me to his place in the country to photograph the area around his property. Right as I arrive a heavy storm blew in and I ended up hanging out inside his house for a few hours talking and playing with his dogs.

He and his girl friend mentioned they they would like portraits done of their dogs and I told them I would love to try it sometime. That evening I did take a few shots of the dogs in the house, poor lighting, small room, pop up flash.

I thought of this assignment and decided to see if I could do anything with them.



This is the shot I worked with. The whole background had to go, and the eyes needed some work as well.

I used the majic wand to get most of the background the used the lasso to clean it up a bit (but I missed things I had to clone to fix later). I inverted the selection and cut the dogs out.

The I created a new image and made the background a solid color. I pasted the dogs in. Then I added a drop shadow. The dog on the left's legs looked out of place like she was hovering above the floor so I cut then out and cropped in a bit tighter. I know it is week compared to the talents many of you share, but what the heck, it was fun.

I made him an 8 x 10 print of the result and he loved it so thats what matters.