Some help to colour flower petals....

[Simone simone]

Hi, I have not posted for a while. I now have photoshop and premier elements 11 and am finding this next step a real challenge. I am trying to colour the browned edges of flower petals a similiar shade - is this possible with this software ? Am I missing something? Could someone advise how I can do this ? Thanks . My mother will smack me for putting her image "out there " so please do not forward further. Thanks This is the Jpeg I could not tinypic the RAW as kept saying invalid file. still so much to understand .....

[pnodrog]

This was done quickly using photoshop but the same approach should work with any photo editing software that supports layer masks.

Unless you are experienced always work with a copy of your file. There are several ways to do what you want and below are the steps I used.

1. Make a new layer and fill it with a very light blue sampled from the flowers then hide or turn this (blue) layer off so you can see everything again.
2. Use magic colour select tool with a tolerance of about 60. (make sure contiguous is not ticked) You can add any unselected brown by holding down the shift key and using the magic wand tool again.
3. At this stage most of the face will also be selected. While holding down the ALT key use lasso tool and draw around the face to deselect it. All of the brown areas you want to adjust should now be selected.
4. Switch on the blue layer and use the selection to form a layer mask by - in photoshop you click on the black square box with a white dot at the bottom of the layers menu.
5. You have several options now depending on skill level and what fine adjustments you wish to make. The simplest method will to be flatten the image and use the clone tool to tidy up. A more controlled method will be to do any cloning to the blue layer and fine tune the layer mask.

P.S. The keys used are for a P.C. if you use a Mac the approach can be the same but the keys will be different. I also did some burning and dodging on the face to adjust the strong lighting a bit and I did not bother to correct the few bits of brown I missed.




Give it a go and good luck.

[pnodrog]

I realise the above approach is based on what I usually do as it ends up giving me the most control but it may seem unnecessarily complicated. The key thing you need to do is to select all the brown you want to eliminate and once selected it may pay you to expand the selection by a few pixels and feather by about the same amount (keeps a soft edge to the fill colour). Once you have done that you can either fill with pale blue on the current layer or make a new layer and fill the selected area with pale blue and then do any cloning you need to make it all look right. You will probably want to deselect the selection or change what is selected prior to any cloning.

[Simone simone]

Thankyou - I knew it was possible but had no idea how to get there....will give it a go thanks again

[Simone simone]

pnodrog ! to let you know I am still giving it a go OMG this photoshop takes a bit of learnin'. I am following your instructions and I will get back to you in the future (not sure how far in the future). Learnt all about layers so far

[pnodrog]

Take as much time as you need and good luck. (I am not sure I have learnt all there is to know about layers yet but learning enough is fine)