Magic wand selection help

[DH2]

Hi all.

I having been having a play with modifying an image of a car. I've cloned out some bits I didn't want to see, but I'd like to have a play with seeing it roughly in different colours. I know I can do this by modifying the hue/saturation, however I've never had alot of luck in neatly selecting with the magic wand - any good tips? (I only have PS Elements v2 at present, if that makes any difference).

DH2

[DIW35]

Zoom in and select manually.

[VxDuncan]

Depends on the type of object you are cutting out - a hard edged object like a car I would normally draw a path round the object using the minimum possible control points, then when happy create a selection from the path, feather and create a layer mask from that. That said I don't know what you have available in elements. The magnetic lasso is an alternative if paths aren't available - remember you can hold down alt to manually force a point at that location. Again feather the selection by a pixel if working on a high res image.

[_dobbo_]

Try using the magnetic lasso tool to get the rough selection right, then zoom in and use the lasso tool to correct any problems with it.

Remember to feather your selection slightly once you've got the desired area selected, it avoids harsh edges.

[rex]

Depending on what colour the car is compared to its background you could use calculations to make a layer mask and get rid of using the wand tool altogether.

[flat-planedCrank]

DH2 said:

Hi all.

I having been having a play with modifying an image of a car. I've cloned out some bits I didn't want to see, but I'd like to have a play with seeing it roughly in different colours. I know I can do this by modifying the hue/saturation, however I've never had alot of luck in neatly selecting with the magic wand - any good tips? (I only have PS Elements v2 at present, if that makes any difference).

DH2

If the elements have a 'solid' outline like a car / building / etc. then using paths will probably be the best approach.

The path tool takes the form of a bezier curve that you guide around the edge of the object. Its particularly good at smooth curves and sharp corners.


Tbh I don't use the magic wand tool that much. I find I spend more time fixing parts of the selection that I might as well have done it by hand in the first place


Cheers.

[VxDuncan]

As I said - paths are the way to go. The knack is to use the minimum number of control points possible...