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Complex selections (not hair)


ALB68

Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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One of the latest I have done, I also tried to add drop shadows but they don't look right to me.

View attachment 52291

Bill, that one is close to flawless. I could see just a tiny bit of halo on the front girls skirt, bottom right (facing it) Otherwise..good Job!
The drop shadow issue addressed above.
 

MrToM

Guru
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...for your drop shadows...
Just to add a couple of things to Larry's excellent dropshadow example...

When creating a dropshadow you can not only position it by the type-in in the window but also by dragging on the canvas itself....sometimes its quicker.

Also, you can 'detach' the dropshadow from the layer it was created from by right clicking the 'fx' icon on the right of the layer and selecting 'Create layer'.

This will place the dropshadow on its own layer underneath the original.

This then allows you to transform the layer even further and maybe make it 'fit' better with the image....dropshadow rarely works well for anything but 'flat' images like paper but detaching it can give you a little more flexibility.

Personally I would create the shadow from scratch with a large soft brush but if you have many images to do then this is not really a viable option.

Anyway, just my 2¢.

Great progress so far.

Regards.
MrTom.
 

RuidosoBill

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Thanks Larry and Mr Tom, I will work on the drop shadows on the image I am currently working and let you take a look. I guess when I think of shadows I first think of the direction of the lighting but in the case of these dance photos I had strobes with umbrellas front right and left so no dedicated direction. It is funny when the drop shadows were mentioned because the dancers looked like they were floating in front of the backdrop and Larry's example gives them some placement.
 

RuidosoBill

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Well, Thought I'd you folks know I continue to work and refine my selections. I am now mainly using the quick selection tool to do the outside edges of the crown, really small brush to fine tune it. I have noticed turning off the auto enhance works better for tiny details. I am then using the quick mask and small brushes to paint out the empty areas, really really small brushes and cranking up the opacity seems to work best. here is a recent example:

_DSC2871-Edit.jpg
Again, there is no way to thank you all enough for pointing me in the right direction, I feel like I have up my "Selection" Game a notch or two.
 

ALB68

Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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"Well, Thought I'd you folks know I continue to work and refine my selections. I am now mainly using the quick selection tool to do the outside edges of the crown, really small brush to fine tune it. I have noticed turning off the auto enhance works better for tiny details. I am then using the quick mask and small brushes to paint out the empty areas, really really small brushes and cranking up the opacity seems to work best. here is a recent example:"

Bill, you nailed that crown! Good work. I could only see a couple of small imperfections overall. The use of Quickmask has been a big help to you but I still think if you would incorporate layer masks into your workflow, if your not,, you can further refine your process.
 

RuidosoBill

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"Well, Thought I'd you folks know I continue to work and refine my selections. I am now mainly using the quick selection tool to do the outside edges of the crown, really small brush to fine tune it. I have noticed turning off the auto enhance works better for tiny details. I am then using the quick mask and small brushes to paint out the empty areas, really really small brushes and cranking up the opacity seems to work best. here is a recent example:"

Bill, you nailed that crown! Good work. I could only see a couple of small imperfections overall. The use of Quickmask has been a big help to you but I still think if you would incorporate layer masks into your workflow, if your not,, you can further refine your process.


I will try it on the next photo, I am over half done (about 2/3) and hoping I took some shots without crowns, lol
 

ALB68

Dear Departed Guru and PSG Staff Member
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I will try it on the next photo, I am over half done (about 2/3) and hoping I took some shots without crowns, lol

Let me know if you need any help with layer masks. Nice thing is you can delete pixels with the same precision as with Quickmask but the deletions are not permanent and if you make a mistake, it's just a matter of changing your brush color to paint the un-intended deletion back in.
 

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