tree details in Photoshop

mapgirl · Oct 22, 2007

I'm still at the low end of my learning curve for Photoshop Elements 4 and have hit a particularly steep section

. I'd like to bring a few more details in to the tree on the left side of the photo below, lighten it just a little bit (not much) without affecting any other part of the image. I've tried the free-hand and magnetic lasso tools, but they're making me nuts :grumpy:

. And I tried the contiguous magic wand tool, but apparently more pixels that color are touching than I thought. What can I do?
By the way, I'm not done with the image yet, but this question has me stumped.

dkf10425 · Oct 23, 2007

I don't use Elements I use CS3 Extended. What I did was duplicate the layer. Then I used a filter called Mask Pro4.1 to paint away the background. This is a great masking tool which works well with stuff like hair and leaves. Then I did a simple shadows adjustment on the tree and combined the layers. The color was a little off under the tree so I used my selection tools to select a small area under the tree, then added a curves adjustment layer, and used a soft brush at opacity 50% to paint on the curves adjustment. There are other ways of doing this too, but this was one way.

EOS_JD · Oct 23, 2007

Too much?

or this

The 2nd is just a feathered selection using the lasoo tool. Not sure whether Elements uses the screen blending mode but all I did was copy the selection to a new layer and change the blending mode to screen.

mapgirl · Oct 23, 2007

Thank you both!
dkf10425--That's pretty close to what I'm looking for. I know that Elements is a cut-down version of PShop, but I haven't worked with layers yet. So that will probably be my next project.
EOS_JD--I like the second better than the first, but both are a little too green for what I'm looking for. However, I hadn't tried feathering with the lasso tool before, and it just gave me more of what I wanted. Thank you!

EOS_JD · Oct 24, 2007

mapgirl said:
Thank you both!
dkf10425--That's pretty close to what I'm looking for. I know that Elements is a cut-down version of PShop, but I haven't worked with layers yet. So that will probably be my next project.
EOS_JD--I like the second better than the first, but both are a little too green for what I'm looking for. However, I hadn't tried feathering with the lasso tool before, and it just gave me more of what I wanted. Thank you!

the 2nd is not edited at all except for the tree. Opacity of the layer can be lowered to taste.

Glad you like the feathering. Use high numbers for high res files and lower numbers for low res images. I think I feathered about 15 pixels but on a high res image numbers over 50 are common for large areas like this.