ADVANCED IMAGE EDITING SKILLS
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any photo-fixing tasks involve
making selections. You may need
to select a specific region such as
a bland sky so that you can replace
it with something more exciting, or simply
adjust the sky’s over-exposed tones without
altering the correctly exposed landscape.
Alternatively, you may want to select a
person from one shot and composite them
into another to produce more creative results.
As you’ve seen from this chapter, the
Toolbox compartments are crammed full of
selection tools, from the primitive Lasso to
the more intelligent Quick Selection tool. All
of these tools produce a selection marquee
- a line of animated dashes that defines the
shape of the selected area. After making a
selection you may find that the marquee
doesn’t include the entire subject, and it may
also be a bit ragged around the edges.
You can modify selection marquees
using main menu commands. If you go to
Select>Modify you can access commands
such as Contract. This enables you to
tighten the marquee around the edges of
your subject to lose any background pixels
that are clinging to the outline. You can
also use the Smooth command to create
less jagged selection edges. These menu
selection commands are a bit fiddly to use,
so Elements also provides an easier and more
effective way to alter selection marquees –
the Refine Edge command.
When you make a selection, you’ll notice
the Refine Edge button in the Tool Options.
As a rule, if a tool creates a selection, you’ll
be able to fine-tune it by clicking the Refine
Edge button. The Refine Edge tool can also be
summoned via Select>Refine Edge.
Use Refine Edge
to improve selections
Improve your selections with Refine Edge
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