I have several questions,but I'm not going to ask them all at once. The help files are less than helpful at times. They seem to tell you what to do, but not how to do it.

When I try to select an area with either the selection brush, or the magnetic lasso instead of getting the area I've tried to select I get a larger irregular shaped area. Sometimes the area is smaller than my selection in places,for instance getting a dogs head, but cutting off the tips of it's ears. Is it not possible to select exactly the area one wants? for instance to cut out a flower accurately? Or am I doing something wrong?

My other current frustrations is with the histogram. I basically understand what a histogram is, but not how to correct one. When I go to the help section it shows examples of photos before and after the histogram is adjusted. What it doesn't say anything about, that I can find, is how to make those adjustments.

Any help with either of these would be appreciated. I have a few more things that are really hard for me to understand or figure out, but I don't want to ask too many questions at once. I might get even more confused.

alpha

EDIT: I should have specified that I am using Version 2 of PSE

I can make a suggestion for the Histogram part of the question.
To make an adjustment with the histogram
open your photo
Enhance> adjust lighting> levels. there you will see a histogram open and you can use the sliders to adjust your photo from there.
some one with more knowledge could probably give you more detailed infromation but this will get you in the right direction.
Tina B

You can also apply a new levels adjustment layer to work with the histogram. Most of us use a combination of selection tools because unless it's a really easy selection, no 1 tool is perfect. Sounds like you are using the magic selection brush, nested under that is the regular selection brush for fine tuning the selection.

Sorry so slow to reply to the offers of help, which are really appreciated. I was called away from my computer right after I posted. Since then I've managed to use the magnetic lasso tool to select a tulip, and use layers to blur the background and merge the blurred background layer with the tulip layer.

I've also tried to work with the histogram, and levels adjustments, but I still haven't figured that one out. Will tackle it again, I'm too stubborn to give up.

I might mention that the photo work I'm most interested in is restoration of old family photos, but I've got a lot to learn before I'm ready for that. Most are either black and white, sepia, or so yellowed I can't tell which they were originally. Plenty of rips, scratches, and creases, too. Many were probably made with a $1.00 box camera.

RedTulip .jpg (36.13 KiB) Viewed 1088 times

Hi Alpha,

I have uploaded a tutorial and sample picture that is used in the tutorial here. This is a zipped file that contains a pdf and a jpeg file.

It uses PSE4, but the changes from PSE2 to PSE4 in this area are minimal or non existent.

P.S. - the last page is a step by step, the first 4 are meant as an explanation.

The final two steps (6&7) are optional and depend on what you want to do next. The tutorial does not address the layer mask or what to do with it, but that is another story.

Personally, I would never do a File, Save of my image - I shoot in RAW mostly so it isn't much of an issue, but I NEVER NEVER save over top of my original image.

Good Luck!

About the histograms:
The histograms are here to help you get a better image, an image which is more pleasing to you. Many think they should achieve a more 'correct' look to the histogram... it is the contrary. The histogram will tell you more precisely what you are already seing and wanting to correct.
When you are editing old faded photos, what you see is a lack of contrast, no big difference between shadows or highlights. The histogram is concentrated near the middle of the graph, and does not extent to both ends. You'll try to correct your image with levels, or brightness/contrast. The histogram in the levels tool can guide you to define precisely what part of the image should be white, which should be black. The look of the corrected histogram will be very different depending on the scene: a very light 'highkey", a moody "lowkey", a scene with equal amounts of highlights, midtones or shadows will be very flat and so on. The histogram will show you when you are going too far, 'clipping' either highlights or shadows.
To get acquainted with what the shape of an histogram means, keep two pallets open: the histogram and the history palette. When doing an adjustment, have a look at the histogram, and go one step back in the history palette to see the 'before' histogram. Try different kind of adjustments. One is particularly interesting, it is the 'Enhance/Adjust color/adjust color curves' found in PSE6. There is no histogram, just a curves graph. Instead of modifying the curves graph directly, there are sliders describing the visual effect to be achieved. This shows you what the effect of lightening will be on the shape of the curve. And if you go one step back in the history palette, you'll see the change in the histogram, before and after. This curves tool in PSE6 has been considered a crippled way of reintroducing the curves tool of CS. I do not agree, it is very useful as such and a better tool to learn what to achieve with curves. When you are at ease with it, you can use the free smartcurves plug-in which has all the power of the curves in CS, plus a wealth of histogram with different modes like CMY, Lab, HSL and more. Experienced users can learn a lot with the lightness, saturation, chroma... histograms.
Another good trick with looking at the before and after histograms is understanding how the 'auto' adjustment, like levels or contrast work.

John and Michel, many thanks for responding. I just tried making some changes in one photo using a levels adjustment layer and had some success. More practice should help.

John, I never work on an original file and save over it. I learned not to do that. Also, when I'm just doing practice I use some old photo files that are disposable. That is, they are not something I want to keep anyway, so if I do somehow mess one up permanently it's no big loss.

Also, I can't download the file from the link you posted. I keep getting a message that the connection was interrupted and that the file contains no data.

Thanks again to each of you.

alpha

edit: There must be some problem with the website where you posted the download. The main page of the website will not load, and gives the same message about the interrupted connection and file contains no data.

Alpha,

Seems to be a problem with 4shared.com'

Try this one

http://www.sendspace.com/file/i5se9w

Alpha, getting back to your selection problem, are you sure you don't have any feathering in action on your selection? Look at the top of the screen when you have a selection tool selected. If I remember correctly (I have CS3) there is a space to set the feathering. It should be at 0 if you want a sharp, exact edge to your selection. If feathering isn't there, you will have to look for it elsewhere. Maybe someone will come along who knows where it is on your version.

Reka, thanks for that tip. I'll have to check that out and be sure. I know there is a place at the top to adjust feathering.

John, thanks again. Got the file easily and quickly from the second link you posted. There are other things on my agenda this morning, but I'll go through the tutorial some time today.

alpha