Selecting

[tpinchback]

I am trying to make a selection of the sky with many tree branches and i keep getting a lines around the edges. I am using color range to make the selection. Is there a better faster way of making the selection without the glowing edges??
thx

[chris.bailey]

Very difficult to do well. Once you have a selection, add a few pixels of feather to it. That will help. The other option to colour range is Image>Extract. Sometimes it works really well. Other than that there are some extraction plugins that are supposed to work well.

[Jesper]

Are you using Photoshop? You can do this with a channel mask in Photoshop. Have a look at the following page with Photoshop tutorials, click on "shanzcan tutorials" on the left side and download tutorial #1:

http://www.shanzcan.com/photoshopahol.html

[evilenglishman]

quick tip:
use the lasso to select the general area you want to change, then go to select/colour range and use the eye dropper tool to select the area.
Play areound with fuzziness, and adding more colours with the eyedropper+ tool. You will soon get the hang of it.

[tpinchback]

quick tip:
use the lasso to select the general area you want to change, then go to select/colour range and use the eye dropper tool to select the area.
Play areound with fuzziness, and adding more colours with the eyedropper+ tool. You will soon get the hang of it.

Thats what i have been doing, but i get a glowing around the branches. \\

I am using photoshop cs.

[john_houghton]

You ultimately want to end up with a layer mask that renders the sky area transparent so that the substitute sky in the layer below shows through. The mask is essentially a silhouette, with the tree branches etc. showing as white against the black sky. The blue channel is often an excellent starting point for creating the required b&w mask. The blue and white areas of the sky will be near white, with the tree branches near black. You just need to use levels, curves and the painting tools to convert a duplicate copy of the blue channel to the silhouette required, (you will need to invert the image of course), and then copy it into a layer mask. You can do this simply by select all/copy/paste. Alternatively, drag the duplicate modified channel down onto the "load channel as selection" icon at the bottom of the channels palette to create a selection. Then create the layer mask with Layer->Add Layer Mask->Hide Selection.

That is the basic technique. Just before creating the layer mask from a selection, you might want to shrink or expand the selection so that it fits the outline of the branches better. At some point, you might use Image->Adjust->Threshold to ensure the silhouette contains only blacks and whites. Blurring the mask (possibly selectively) will enable you to feather the edges.

It will take a lot of care to get an invisible join around tree branches. Sometimes there might be a blue edge to the branches, which shows up against white in the substitute sky below. To correct this, you can make a selection round the branches and desaturate the blues.

John

[tpinchback]

You ultimately want to end up with a layer mask that renders the sky area transparent so that the substitute sky in the layer below shows through. The mask is essentially a silhouette, with the tree branches etc. showing as white against the black sky. The blue channel is often an excellent starting point for creating the required b&w mask. The blue and white areas of the sky will be near white, with the tree branches near black. You just need to use levels, curves and the painting tools to convert a duplicate copy of the blue channel to the silhouette required, (you will need to invert the image of course), and then copy it into a layer mask. You can do this simply by select all/copy/paste. Alternatively, drag the duplicate modified channel down onto the "load channel as selection" icon at the bottom of the channels palette to create a selection. Then create the layer mask with Layer->Add Layer Mask->Hide Selection.

That is the basic technique. Just before creating the layer mask from a selection, you might want to shrink or expand the selection so that it fits the outline of the branches better. At some point, you might use Image->Adjust->Threshold to ensure the silhouette contains only blacks and whites. Blurring the mask (possibly selectively) will enable you to feather the edges.

It will take a lot of care to get an invisible join around tree branches. Sometimes there might be a blue edge to the branches, which shows up against white in the substitute sky below. To correct this, you can make a selection round the branches and desaturate the blues.

John

Thanks John,
Hopfully with your answer i will be able to bring my photoshop skills to the next level!

Will be trying it out tonight, will post if sucessful.
thanks