3rd Digital Meeting of the Session - 2nd December 08
We welcomed Mike Lawrence DPAGB, AFIAP, President of Oldham PS, to this third digital meeting of the session, to talk about Selections in Photoshop. This was a natural follow-on from Barry’s talk which had included using selections in producing Layers. In the first half Mike considered the various selection tools in a systematic manner, looking at the rectangular, elliptical, single row and single column marquee tools and considering how one might use them. He noted that there was usually more than one way of achieving one’s end point in Photoshop, and that often people stuck to a method learnt using an earlier version of PhotoShop even if a superior, or different, way emerged in later PhotoShop versions. There was nothing wrong with this since ultimately it was a matter of efficiency in getting the job done.
Mike then considered the Lasso tools; and emphasized the importance of the Inverse selection. CTRL H was a convenient way of hiding the marching ants if they became annoying. The shortcuts SHIFT; ALT; & SHIFT+ALT were useful in speeding up ones work. Holding down the SHIFT key allows one to add extra area to a selection. Holding down the ALT key allows one to remove an area. SHIFT+ALT allows the common area between 2 selections to be retained. The sequence Select;Modify;Expand (or Contract) allows the selected area to grow or contract by the number of pixels you choose. Mike normally chose to feather his selections at the end of the process, but interestingly would work to a fraction of a pixel when initially setting the degree of feathering, Of course one cannot have a fraction of a pixel in the final image, but the modifications to layers is a mathematical process of changing the contents of groups of pixels, and the mathematics can deal with such fractions. Mike felt that the final image was marginally improved by this method.
After the interval Mike presented a few examples of the use of selections. He moved a car from one image to another emphasising the need to get the lighting and shadows correct. With reference to the initial image he chose to add shadows to the inserted car to match those already present.
Mike presented a grab shot image of a Romanian girl anxious to have her photo taken. The right eye was sharp, but not the left eye, so clearly the background would be even more out of focus. He constructed a new image with the sharp left hand side of the face peering into the picture, whilst behind was the blurred image of the tenement blocks in which the girl lived. He chose LENS BLUR from the possibilities of FILTER:BLUR range to produce the desired background out-of-focus effect.
But a particular problem was how to deal with Hair, which is impossible to select and has to be fudged. The colour of the hair is a function of the background light, which makes selecting and moving the hair selection tricky. Mike chose to select the majority of the hair, and then, on the new image, paint in the extra hair he had excluded from his initial selection using a splatter brush. He used Multiply or Screen options to blend the images
Jon Allanson proposed the Vote of Thanks. He had found the session to be most interesting; and felt that everyone would have taken something new from the session. As Mike had mentioned, folk tended to stay with what they knew well, but new-comers could decide to become proficient at some of the latest techniques.