Mark,
It looks like you had a "soft" edge selection. If you use the selection brush, make sure you selected a hard brush or set the hardness to 100%. If you used a lasso tool, set the feather to zero.
Try it and let us know if that helped.
Bob
Mark,
What method did you use for making the selection? Did you have anti-aliasing turned on or not? If you used the magic wand was the eye dropper sampler in the ‘single pixel’ mode?
When I have created a disappointing outline, I cheat. For instance in this image, I might try or some variation of;
* load your selection, (test a small portion of the below steps to see if better with or without antialiasing, test with no feather or feather=1 px)
* adjust if necessary with the select>modify>contract or expand a couple of pixels worth so that the selection includes all of the background and the blurry area haloing (sp?) the people.
* chose a brush size for the clone stamp which is a bit wider than the ‘mixed zone’, change the hardness to about 75% hard
* clone the blurry area by sampling from the area just inside (before) the mixed zone. Example, on the dress skirt, clone inside of that faint white line which mirrors the edge of the skirt but exists apart, so that the false thin edge is covered by blurry background. This goes fast as you needn’t be careful about ‘staying in any lines’, new data will only be applied with the selection, so clone tool can slop over selection edge a bit and have no effect. Important thing is choosing the correct brush size and the distance from selection edge to initiate your sampling.
* depending on results, may need to invert selection and strengthen continuity of people’s outlines also by cloning a couple pixels worth, but don’t think so.
Just a thought…don’t know how you made this selection. Maybe changing one of the parameters I mentioned first and redoing the selection is best, or maybe too time consuming which will make my suggestion attractive.
Nancy
hi Nancy 😉 You weren’t above me when i first started typing…either you type real fast or I’m piddling over here. 🙂
I implemented Roberts suggestions and posted the new image as fatherandbride3. Considerable improvement but still a little blurring in the suit shoulders. I will try Nancy and Jodi’s suggestion later.
BTW, my brother tells me his emotion was associated with thinking about how much this wedding is costing him. 🙂 What a sense of humor, huh?
Mark, I agree with JoAnn – it’s a powerful image and absolutely stunning!
Did you try using a mask layer to help define the selection? A mask would allow you to carefully paint and repaint along the edges of the selection until you get it just the way you want it. One way to do it:
1. Starting with the original unblurred image, duplicate the background layer; call the new layer Blur.
2. Click on the background layer, then do Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Color and pick white. The Fill Layer should appear between the Background and the Blur Level.
3. Click on the top (Blur) layer, then do Layer>Group with Previous. Now the Fill layer acts as a mask for the top layer.
4. Next I would do a rough selection on the objects you wanted to keep from blurring using whatever tools you prefer. It doesn’t have to be perfect at this point.
5. With the selection active, click on the Fill Layer and do an Edit>Fill with black. The Fill Layer mask should show a black silhouette where your selection was active.
6. Turn off the selection. (Ctrl- or Cmd- D)
7. Now go to the top (Blur) layer and do a Gaussian blur on it. The area you selected before should remain unblurred, due to the ‘black hole’ you painted in step 5.
8. Return to the fill layer and switch to a paint brush to touch up the edges of your selection. To put blur in unblurred areas, paint with black; to remove blur, paint with white. Make sure you’re painting on the Fill layer mask, of course!
Sorry if you already knew all this; kinda got carried away when I saw what a beautiful image you’re dealing with!
Chuck
Oops!! You got suggests from Robert, Nancy and Jodi….I’m outa my league!!
Chuck,
You’re not redundant, you’re great! Mask plan not covered before you.
Nancy
Chuck,
I like your suggestion and it is not redundant. I will tr y it. I really love the way the photo came out and I’m surprised that some of my family members aren’t as enthusiastic about it as I am. Whatever they think, I don’t care. It’s a great shot and makes an interesting image and I love it.
Nancy, My brother was just making a joke. He told me he had to control his emotions so as not to be a distraction. BTW, my dad cried at my brothers wedding about five years ago and it was his second marriage at 56. My dad was that kind of guy.
Thanks for all your suggestions.
Hi Mark,
I see you got a number of additional suggestions while I was out — all good. That’s what I like about this program, there are many ways to achieve the same end.
Here are a few additional tips I’ve found useful.
First, I usually make a gross selection using whichever selection tool or tools will let me block out the area I want in the fastest time for that image. Then, I’ll greatly magnify the image and go around the selection and adjust the fit as needed.
I’ll frequently use the selection brush to fine tune the selection and use keyboard shortcuts to speed up the process. The ones I’ve found most useful are:
"space bar" will change the cursor to the hand and allow you to drag the image around to move the next segment into view.
"alt" has two uses. First, press alt and spin the mouse wheel to change magnification. And, second, pressing alt will reverse the add/subtract selection action of the brush. I’ll set the options bar to add to selection and then press alt when I want it to subtract from selection. This works very much like the mask approach where you paint with black or white to control the selection. Example: I’ll be tracing the outline and go over the line, I’ll move the cursor to the other side of the line, press and hold alt, and "erase" where I went over the line.
"shift" lets me draw straight line selections. I’ll move the cursor to one end of the line and click once then I’ll move to the other end of the line, press and hold shift and click again to select the entire line segment. If you continue to hold shift down you can move in short segments even around curves pretty well — each click adds an additional segment. Don’t make the size of the brush too big.
There are lots more ways to make selections but this is enough for now.
Bob
Thanks again Bob,
I hope these are useful tips to others on this forum. They certainly are to me. I just got done doing one using the mask method recommended by Chuck. For really getting the best job, this trick will do it. Also, high magnification is very important. Blurring the background of images is probably one of my primary uses of Elements. I just posted fatherandbride 4 and it is my cleanest selection yet. I’m going to have this printed and give it to my mom, grandmother of the bride. I’ll bet she’ll love it.
Mark, it looks great!
Now….how did you select and color the flowers (or leave them colored and drain the color from the background)?? That’s a very effective technique….
Chuck
Chuck,
That was done pretty easily. I duplicated photo,then Layer>Hue/Saturation, moved the Saturation setting all the way to the left -100. Then I selected the paintbrush and scratched it like a lotto ticket to bring out the color. Enlarged the image as much as possible while bringing the color to the flowers. Check out the original and the woman on the left with the color in her hair. Maybe I should have brought out her hair color too. 🙂 (You’re never too old to have fun with your hair color) It was a shame to lose it.
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http://www.pbase.com/image/19046997/original>
Another example of this
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http://www.pbase.com/image/16414681>
Mark, thanks for sharing the original with us. Viewed side-by-side with the modified version, you can really see how a good photo can become great by well-conceived reduction of distracting elements – like color and a focused background! A real eye-opener!
Chuck
I use the alt key with both the selection brush and the selection tools. I was a bit imprecise in the description and mixed the two together. Hope I didn’t confuse anyone.
Bob
Bob, if there was any confusion, it was caused by my mentioning that the Selection Brush was a little different. Your explanation was perfectly clear, as always!
Chuck
Jodi, I certainly wouldn’t call it MY method…the person who has used it and talked about it most effectively is our friend Down Under: Susan!
Chuck, the self-appointed ‘fall guy’
Chuck, the damage control expert
Chuck, the peacekeeper extrordinaire
Chuck,
Do you think it has an advantage over the
Ctrl/A > Ctrl/C > Ctrl/Shift/V > Ctrl/J (creating a layer mask)?
Nancy
Whoops…Ctrl/J doesn’t work in Version 2 I just remembered
Chuck, you’re right…and sometimes I think Jodi and I are the last of the version 1 users.
