Today I thought we’d look at a couple of tips or hints to help with your selections that may not always be the very best examples (how many are after all).

This is the photo we’re going to use to start with…it’s a photo I took of a gorgeous area near the Teslin River, of Teslin, BC, Canada.  Anyway, suppose we want to get rid of the sky, who knows why, maybe we want to add some larger mountains behind the cabin (OK, maybe not but it’s just an example so work with me here).

So here are the steps I’d take to select the sky out of this photo.

1. Select the right tool.  I think I’ll start with the Quick Selection Tool (W).
2. In the Options Bar select the New Selection.  Some tools automatically select either the New or Add selection options so you don’t always need to select anything here but it’s ALWAYS good to check it out to see what is selected and correct if it’s not what you want/need.
   TIP:  Hold the Shift key while selecting to ADD and the Alt key while selecting to SUBTRACT
3. Start selecting area(s).  In this screen shot you see two “x” where I’m making selections.  Note that after making the first selection I need to choose the Add to selection in the Options bar if I didn’t do that to start with.

Ok, on this particular photo if I had done all that so far I’d just have portions of the sky.  To add more sky another TIP is to have part selected then on the Menu bar go to Select > Similar.

Sometimes this will add exactly what you want but sometimes it will select too much.  In this case it selected too much.  Here’s what it selected.

For this photo I don’t want to select the pathway, the little portion of the roof and anything not sky so…  All I want selected is the sky so this time I’m going to select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and drag around all the areas I don’t want selected with the Subtract from Selection button (Alt key) in the Options Bar.

Above you see (red rectangles) some of the selections I made to get rid of marching ants around things I want to keep.

Once you have everything just how you want it I suggest you copy the entire selection to a new layer (Ctrl J).  Now here’s what happened.  I want to get rid of the sky but because I selected the sky that’s all I copied to the new layer.  Not really what I want.

So I’m going to Undo (Ctrl Alt Z).  This time let’s Reverse the selection by going to Select > Inverse in the Menu Bar.  Now copy to a new layer (Ctrl J).

And you’ve got it.  You can drag this top layer to a new document.  You can hide the background layer (click the eye in the layers palette).  You can save it so that when you’re ready to use it the sky won’t be there.  To do this latter option Save As a .png document. 

Note the gray boxes are blank, no pixel areas.  As long as you save as a .png you will maintain those blank pixels.  If you save as .jpg those blank pixels will fill with color (white).

The Toolbar has several selection tools on it and it will depend on what you’re trying to select out of a photo to determine which tool is the most effective.  So, let’s look at each tool.

The Rectangular Marquee Tool and Elliptical Marquee Tool (M) may not, at first glance, seem like selection tools but if the item you’re going to select is a perfect square/rectangle or circle/oval then this is a fantastic tool but how many times is the item so perfect?  Not very so let’s look at some other tools, too.  Note…remember if you see the Rectangular Marquee Tool (like in the tool bar pictured above) and you want the Elliptical Marquee Tool, tap the M key, want to go back tap the M key till it shows.  In Photoshop (PS) there are 4 tools nested here, in Elements there are just the two already mentioned.

Next are the Lasso Tools (L).  Note there are three Lasso Tools (the regular Lasso, the Polygonal Lasso and the Magnetic Lasso Tool).  Again you can scroll through them by clicking the L (also called a shortcut key – see the W and L at the end of the pop-up menus above?).  Using these tools takes practice but are so very useful so practice, practice, practice…

Here’s what you do.  To use the Lasso Tool you just click and draw with your mouse or if you’re lucky enough to have a drawing pad (like Bamboo) use the stylus and just draw like you would with a pen.  The great thing about the regular Lasso tool is that you can draw around any shape…the bad thing is it’s not very precise.

If your shape has straight lines use the Polygonal Lasso tool.   Click with the mouse or stylus, hold the Shift key and click at the end of a straight line (like from corner to corner to corner of the paver above).  Keep going around the object until you get back to the beginning.  The mouse shape will get a tiny little “o” beside the mouse pointer when you get back to the beginning.

For something like this car there are two ways at least you could do it.  The first if to check the difference in color between the object and the background.  If it’s not very distinct or separated you won’t be able to use either of these but as you can see with this cool looking bug/car it’s pretty sharp distinguishable lines.  The first tool you could use is the Magnetic Lasso tool.  Click and drag around the edges you want selected (fairly close but not necessarily right on – it’s pretty forgiving) and keep dragging around till you get back to the beginning and see that little “o” again.  Then click to finish.

The second tool you can use for something like this car is the Quick Selection Tool (W) but truthfully this one takes more playing around and you end up needing the tools in the Options Bar a lot more (see below) so I prefer the Magnetic Lasso for this one.  Give it a try th­­­­­­ough when you have something that doesn’t  have quite so much color like the carrot here.  These carrots are very distinctly different from the white background they’re laying on.  Note that the entire carrot is selected.  So now we get to use those tools in the Options Bar.

The four buttons New Selection (a box), Add to selection (two boxes), Subtract from selection (corner ), Intersection of selection (two boxes with tiny box in the middle).  The first button (New Selection) will automatically be selected if you have not selection made.  If you start a selection with one tool and then decide another tool will help select a different part, select the Add to selection option and the new tool and select with it.  If you have a selection that included more than you wanted use the Subtract from selection option and whichever tool will best get rid of the selection you don’t want.

Once you have the object selected, copy (Ctrl J) to a new layer or drag to a new document.

AND you can download my QP here!!

The idea is to take twelve photos on the 12th of the month all during 2012.  Obviously you can take a lot more than 12 photos but cut it down to 12 for your scrapbook page.  You could do a double spread, too.  Then link your page up to the website.  Here’s the link.  So go check it out, sign up and get that camera going TODAY!!

I’ll post a template here in a day or two if you want to use that.  It’ll be free.  Can’t beat that.  And if you leave me your email or send to PatriciaD@digitalscrapbooklessons.com I’ll just email it to you.

I’VE CREATED A TEMPLATE (free) FOR WHOEVER sends me their email to the address above.  Be sure to include TEMPLATE in the subject line.

I created a paper layering old photos that weren’t all that great and may have been destined for the garbage.  There are some texture photos, some flower photos, erasing edges, using the various transparency levels and overlay settings.  I’d love to know what you think.  Would you use this paper?  Is it too dark?  Too much going on?  What about the grunge edges?I like it and the more I look at it the more I like it but that doesn’t mean you have to.  I’d like to hear your comments.

Hey, do you want to create your own?  Check it out at the site I found the directions:  Create an Art Paper Challenge

Have you made and WRITTEN down your 2012 resolutions?  I mean since this is a scrapbooking site let’s talk scrapbooking goals…

FIRST – are your scrapbook supplies and photos organized?  How and when do you plan to get them organized?  Do you have a system in mind?

SECOND – how many pages do you plan to make each week, month?

THIRD – are there some new techniques you plan to learn and list them?

FOURTH – photography goals (any new techniques you plan to learn), things you need/want to take photos of, what’s the plan?

And finally, have you created a book about your life?  Or is there someone special you need to create a book about?

Every week this year I’m going to post at least 2 questions for you to answer about your life.  I encourage you to answer them in a journal or a scrapbook page.

The questions this week are:  What do you know about your birth?  Most of us know the where (city, state) but do you know where your parent’s lived (address)?  What story have your parents told about your birth?  Do you have any newborn photos of yourself?  Everyone who answers these questions here (short answer if you want) I will send a new year mini kit.

The first thing we need to do is make the shape of the candy cane (or crook).   There are probably any number of ways to go about it I thought I’d show you how to use parts of shapes to create the shape you want.   We’ll use the Brush Tool, the Shapes Tool and Guides.  

First create your canvas.   Create a new document (Ctrl N) about 2”x2” with a resolution of 300 pixels per inch.   Below is the document screen that appears.   Select Custom from the top drop box, and the options listed:

Click OK.   Select the Custom Shape Tool (U).   Side note here.   The color doesn’t really matter but if it makes you feel better you can choose a nice red color (I’ll show you why in the next lesson).   Double click on the Foreground color picker and choose a red (I’ll show you in the next lesson how to make it a nice striped candy cane).  We could have as easily made it black.

Click on the Shape option in the Options Bar across the top of the screen.   If you don’t see Arrow 18 (above) click on the tiny right facing arrow head with the circle around it (to the right of the bird in the above screenshot and select All about half way down the list).   Hold the Shift key (to maintain proportions) and drag a curved arrow about 1/4 the size of your canvas.   Like this:  

Transform it (Ctrl T) to change the direction.   Right click inside the pull handles and select Rotate 90 degrees clockwise (CW).   Hit Enter to accept the transform or click the (green in Elements) checkmark.  

Then right click on the Layer in the Layers Palette and select Rasterize Layer (in Photoshop) and Simplify Layer (in Elements).   I moved mine into the top center of my document, select the Move Tool (V) and drag where you want it.   Select the Brush Tool (B).   In the drop box brush picker (in the Options Bar) select Brush 19.   Recall that these brush numbers are the size of the brush in pixels not really the brush number but it’s an easy way find the brush we want.   Make the brush larger by using the right bracket key (] ).   You will want the size of the brush to be exactly the size of your curved arrow.   So place the round shape of your to be brush over the arrow and change size till you get it where you want it.   Just by using the bracket key it will jump 5 pixels.   In my case I want somewhere between 45 and 50 so I need to click the drop box (brush preset picker) to use the slider to change the size to about 48.

If your ruler bar (along the top and left edge of your document) do not show go to View > Rulers (Ctrl R).   Click on the left ruler bar and drag out a Guide (thin green marker line) just to exactly the very edge of the arrow like this (if you can’t see it click on the screenshot to see a larger view):  

Add a new layer (click on the Create New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers Palette).      Be sure your Brush Tool is still selected and starting at the left side of the arrow click, hold the Shift key (to keep a straight line) and click near the bottom of your document just along the edge of the Guide.

Now let’s get rid of the head of the arrow.   Be sure you’re on the curved arrow layer.   Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and drag a shape around arrowhead.   Hit delete.   Get rid of the rectangle by clicking Ctrl D.

Now to give it a nice rounded end like the bottom of the stem select the Brush Tool (B) again and click on the end that did have the arrow.   And you’re done.   Well, save it first, of course.   Tune in for the next lesson and we’ll give it some pretty stripes.  

Have fun!!

And don’t forget:  I have a copy of Photoshop Elements 9 (going to make that 10) to give away.  I will have the drawing when we have 200 GFC (Google Friend Connect) members and 200 FB fans (pink “F” on the right).  So if you haven’t already done so please enter here.  COME ON LET’S GET IT DONE SO WE CAN HAVE OUR DRAWING!!  REMEMBER as part of the drawing you need to have comments on other posts.  We’re over half way there…Good luck!!

Then finally it dawned on me…we’d gotten the wrong week.   We could have stayed for the sermon but ended up leaving.  I’d almost not gone anyway.  I’d hurt my back pretty bad moving the day before.

I packed up everything I could (not much) and one of the things I really did not want to part with (one of only 3 pieces of small furniture) was this chair (see below).  When I got home and was able to unload my little trailer the chair was all moldy.  I have been so upset.  Have you ever tried to get rid of mold?  Were you able to?  What did you use?  I am considering using bleach.  All that black on the seat front and top back are mold.  It has stunk up my cabin, too.

The good news is that I have been able to get a job here in Alaska…YIPPEE!!

By the way, I know this isn’t the best angle for a photo of a chair but truthfully I was just taking this for myself not to share.  Please feel free to share any information you might have about eradicating mold or how to use Clorox Bleach to do so.  I was wondering if I should mix it with baking soda.

I received information about Clorox’s Bleach It Away campaign and am sharing my messy moment for the chance to win prizes from The SITS Girls. To learn more about the messy moment program, check out www.BleachItAway.com.  Sharing your story on the Clorox fan page gets you entered for the chance to win $25,000 and daily prizes, and you can grab a coupon for Clorox® Regular Bleach.

I found a pretty awesome site, too.  On this site the author, Cheryl, has a lesson “My Life Before I Was Your Mother”.  I’ll be participating in the lessons and thought you’d like the opportunity to do so, too.  So go check it out and let’s learn and create some great stuff together.

Lesson 1 is already up and she posts a new lesson periodically.  And if you sign up for her newsletter Cheryl will send you a notice when there’s a new lesson.  So many of us tell the story of our children from childhood but we don’t tell our own story.  This is a great way to get started on YOUR story.

On the first page of Cheryl’s site note that there’s a free set of Quick Pages available for download, too.  Be sure to let her know you found her from this site.  I’d appreciate it and I’m sure she would, too.

Another site with some awesome give-aways is ScrappersGuide.com.  Linda Sattgast is the best teacher of Photoshop and Elements I know of.  She is giving away 3, yes 3 copies of PS Elements 10.  There are 3 ways to get into the drawing.  First sign up for her free weekly email and tips.  Second, purchase any product from her store and third, by becoming a Digital Scrapper Premier subscriber.  I buy everything Linda produces.  You cannot go wrong with Linda.

So enjoy Digital Scrapbooking Day.  Go check out all these things and let me know how your weekend is as a digital scrapper…Happy scrapping!!

And don’t forget:  I have a copy of Photoshop Elements 9 to give away.  I will have the drawing when we have 200 GFC (Google Friend Connect) members and 200 FB fans (pink “F” on the right).  So if you haven’t already done so please enter here.  COME ON LET’S GET IT DONE SO WE CAN HAVE OUR DRAWING!!  REMEMBER as part of the drawing you need to have comments on other posts.  We’re over half way there…Good luck!!

P.S. You can get a free trial of Adobe Photoshop Elements here:  http://www.dpbolvw.net/b9108lnwtnvAFBEHKJHACBGIHJEK