selecting complex objects (Fake color channels?)

Hi, All.

I'm new here and have a question about a somewhat complex procedure I've developed to help in selecting complex objects such as people.

In brief, it involves layers such as:

Threshold Adjustment Layer
Solid Color Layer (Blend Mode Darken)
Image Layer

Sometimes I do this with the Solid Color being Red Green or Blue, but sometimes I use the color picker to pick a color from the image.

Usually you can find a color that increases the contrast when you set the threshold on the threshold layer. Then you can select the resulting black/dark object using the magic wand tool. Go Back to the Image layer and copy the selection.

I've never used actual Photoshop, but I have used the GIMP program and I can simulate the color channels present there. There are no color chanels in Elements, right, but these seem to point to a possible way around that. How do channels work in Photoshop?

There was a previous thread on the group about selecting by color. This also might point to a method that does that.

My real question is, what is the best method of selecting complex objects? Is there any easier way?

Thanks for any help.

--Dave

Dave -It sounds as though you are indeed close to duplicating colour channels in Elements. For a detailed reference on how to do this I would recommend Richard Lynch's book, "The Hidden power of Photshop Elements 2" - he goes through a sequence of steps to splitting an image into layers which have the same information as the R, G, B channels of Photoshop, and provides an automated one click method of doing so. As you obviously already know these can be used to provide better contrast and thus an easier method of selection of complex objects. It is a bit easier in PS (I'm just trialling PS CS at the moment) as the different colour channels just show up on a separate palette - looks very much like the layer palette, and you can just duplicate a channel and apply threshold, or curves or levels, to increase the contrast and then use this to create a mask or an alpha channel. But Richard's book provides work arounds for these sort of masking/selection techniques that work quite well in Elements.