Need help in selection...

[beachbum2277]

I'm looking for some help from one of you. My PS skills are alright, but no where near what I've seen from some of you on here! Here's the photo I'm working with. What I'm trying to do is a selective coloring on it. I want to keep the bean in color and everything else in black and white. The problem I'm having is getting a good selection where the bean meets the sky. I'm getting a lot of jaggies and some uneven selections. I need the jaggies to be minimal as I will be blowing this up to 24x36 and I think they'll show up at that size.

Are any of you really good at this sort of thing?

If you can help me out, I'd be willing to get you the original jpeg to work off of....

Thanks ahead of time for your help!

The shot (Click for larger)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3156/2646910840_e7004fc6c0.jpg
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3156/2646910840_e7004fc6c0_b.jpg)

Jaggies I'm getting... (Click for larger)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3021/2646910868_0a44cf35d7.jpg
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3021/2646910868_73a6cc932e_o.jpg)

[PixelMagic]

So what do I win?

I'd probably lose points for my black & white conversion but this is simply a proof of concept to show what could be done in about 10 minutes.


http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/2354/2646910840e7004fc6c0bcoot4.jpg

[kirkt]

Nice Fedka - use the path tool, beachbum, to isolate the bean from the rest of the image. This will make for a smoother selection.

[kirkt]

I couldn't resist making it look like a nose...

[beachbum2277]

So what do I win?

I'd probably lose points for my black & white conversion but this is simply a proof of concept to show what could be done in about 10 minutes.




Fedka, that looks pretty good to me! What steps did you take to get the selection crisp?

Any tips???


.

[beachbum2277]

Nice Fedka - use the path tool, beachbum, to isolate the bean from the rest of the image. This will make for a smoother selection.

Ok, I looked on PS and needed the Help section to even figure out the path tool and that just gave me one more thing to add to my list of figuring out. I pretty much just always used the wand tool. I think that's why I'm running into problems.

.

[PixelMagic]

Thanks Kirkt....looks like we both had the same idea.

Nice Fedka - use the path tool, beachbum, to isolate the bean from the rest of the image. This will make for a smoother selection.

[PixelMagic]

I used the Pen Tool to make a selection of the Dome; actually I created a path and then converted the Path into a selection. By loading the selection and creating a Black & White layer it automatically masked out the dome so it remained in color while the rest of the photo was monochrome. After that it was a fairly simple matter of cleaning up by painting with black on the mask to make the people that intersected with the selection into black & white.



Fedka, that looks pretty good to me! What steps did you take to get the selection crisp?

.

[PixelMagic]

Sorry to say it but the Magic Wand is for chumps :) The result you typically get looks like a rodent was gnawing at the edges of your cutout.

There are much better tools available right within Photoshop and I tend to rank them in this order of effectiveness:

1. Magic Wand
2. Lasso
3. Quick Mask
4. Extract Tool
5. Color Range
6. Channel Masks

Channel Masks, especially when used in conjunction with the Levels, Apply Image or Calculations commands, are the most powerful selection tools in Photoshop. Master that and you can select anything without using third-party plug-ins.


Ok, I looked on PS and needed the Help section to even figure out the path tool and that just gave me one more thing to add to my list of figuring out. I pretty much just always used the wand tool. I think that's why I'm running into problems.

.

[beachbum2277]

Thanks a lot guys! Looks like I have to learn the pen tool, huh!

.