Move Selection to Second Photo in Software

Generator EAN-13 Supplement 5 in Software Move Selection to Second Photo

Before moving the foreground, Rosch used the software s brushes to touch up the dark and light areas of the foreground and to add a slight red coloration to contrast

with the blue sky Then, using the Move Tool the same tool in Elements he dragged the foreground onto the Milky Way photo, as shown in Figure 5-3 (I ve re-created his Photoshop work in Elements For illustrative purposes, the sky in the background of the park photo has been made transparent using Elements Magic Eraser Tool so the foreground stands out But that s not necessarily how Rosch did it)

Figure 5-3 Drag from one picture to the other to create a photo that s more than the sum of its parts

Using the Transform function, Rosch completed the job by tugging at the handles of the moved selection until it fills the bottom of the frame Once saved, the image looks for all the world or all the universe like a single photograph

Other photos require a different approach to compositing The old French MD 312 FLAMANT in Figure 5-4 fades off into the blackness of its hanger The Magic Wand in Elements can t find a line of demarcation in conditions like that So instead, we ll use the Magic Lasso Tool to outline the airplane and give it one last flight, digitally

The Magic Lasso deserves its name It works similarly to the Polygonal Lasso Tool to draw a selection in the form of an irregularly shaped polygon The difference is that if you lead the Magic version near a portion of a photograph that s a meeting place for two distinct colors or decidedly different light and dark areas, the line drawn by the Magic Lasso automatically clings to the border dividing the two areas like static charged Saran Wrap Each time you click the mouse, a small box appears on the line, anchoring it to the current location

AS A MATTER OF FACT It s best to use the Magic Lasso Tool for all your freehand selecting even if you don t need to trace a line along some boundary With other lasso tools, if you wiggle your hand unintentionally, the lasso s line scurries across the page With Magic Lasso, pressing DEL backs the line up to the last box you clicked Continue hitting DEL and you keep backing up, a neat way to regain control of a selection gone wild

To outline the airplane, first use the Magic Lasso to draw a rough outline of the plane Don t bother to include the propellers for this particular picture Then use the Zoom Tool to move in close to the line, revealing plenty of small wiggles that take bites from the plane or include pieces of the background Elements lassos allow you to make a choice in the Options bar to whether subsequent areas enclosed by the lassos are added to or subtracted from your original selection A combination of the two techniques quickly produces a smooth outline of the plane At this point, we could drag the plane onto another photo, as Art Rosch did with his starry highway photos But we ve been there, done that So let s use another

technique to combine two photos We ll drop out the plane s background by making it transparent, and then slip a second photo on a new layer under the plane To drop out the background, as shown in Figure 5-5, from the menu choose Select | Inverse to switch the selection from the plane to the background Choose the Eraser from the Toolbar and on the Options bar, select a large brush size for the eraser and set Opacity to 100 percent Sweep the selected background with the tool Don t worry about the foreground; the eraser will affect only the selected area Within the selection, each sweep of the eraser replaces the image with a checkerboard pattern that indicates that that area is transparent

AS A MATTER OF FACT For a ghostlike effect, set the eraser Opacity at 50 percent or so The eraser will evenly convert only half the pixels to transparency so that the selected area and whatever you put behind it both show at the same time