You're welcome Peggy! Thanks for watching!

You're welcome Rich! It took me a bit of experimentation to come up with this technique, I am sure that someone else has already stumbled upon it but useful technique none the less. The different car color change videos work out well for demonstrating some of the ways to change the color of objects. I like using cars since they have a good clean one color scheme. George

: )

You're Welcome! George

You're welcome Sandy! George

You're welcome Phil, George

Thanks Sunndog! This technique has limited application but when it works, it works great. George

Wow, thank you!

Hi, once you have the selection made you can change the sky any way you want. If you want to add a cloudy sky just put that layer in the same place that I put the orange gradient layer. If you want to have both, the gradient and clouds keep in mind that with the sun on the horizon behind the tree like it is in this photo the clouds would be dark and backlit by the sky. Also if you are adding in a different sky with clouds try to find one that has the same perspective so that the clouds would look natural towards the horizon. I discuss sky perspective in this video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nNCgiKmKuqyRhac.html George

You're Welcome Peter! I had to do something like this back in the 90's when I was doing some SFX in the film industry. Never did get it just right. The special effects software we had back then was Unix based and no where near as powerful as PSE. It would have been a breeze with today's programs. George

Thank You! George

You're welcome Phil. This would be a great way to enhance an existing sky as well. You would need 3 layers, background would be the original image, middle layer would be your adjustment layer to improve the sky, and the top layer would be the masked layer like in this video. Basically you would be seeing just the original sky with adjustment layer in place of the sunset gradient I used in this video. George

You're Welcome! George

Thanks John, this is a special technique that is seldom needed but when it is appropriate it is spectacular. George

Thank Rich! This is one I have been playing around with for a while. I consider the two most difficult selections to make are hair and trees. Hair can usually be solved with the Refine Edge tool and you can get a good selection of a tree in Photoshop using channels. So this technique allows you to simulate the way the selection would work using channels in PS. As long as there is some way to separate out the tree from the sky you can make this work. George

Without any doubt, making the tree selection into black and white allows PSE to do its best in complement for making a selection. Up to this time my only options have been to clone stamp, content aware or crop out tree branches,none which leaves you the real look of the tree. Thank you for all you do! Rich

You're Welcome! George

Thanks! George

Thanks John, you can always learn more and get better. I felt just how you felt only more so when I switched from a regular college to a dedicated art school. In college I was one of the best, in art school I was only so so and had to work hard to catch up. Good lesson though on humility, changed my outlook completely. George

Thanks! George

Hi Scott, my complete training titles are different from my KZfaq projects but my training titles do contain more projects as well. My course videos show you how to use every tool, every menu, every panel and option in the program so that you become an expert. The best way to learn Photoshop Elements is to use my complete training then follow that with my KZfaq projects. All of my main followers on my KZfaq channel also have my training courses as well. Here is the link for the Photoshop Elements 15 course: www.howtogurus.com/photoshop_elements_15_tutorial-DVD.htm You can also find my training on Amazon. You will find a full list of videos on the page. George

HI Paula, I always recommending getting the latest version if you are upgrading. The latest version of Photoshop Elements is 2018. I didn't recommend upgrading to 2018 from 15 because there wasn't enough changed between those 2 versions to make the upgrade worth the price but 2018 is a great upgrade from version 14. Version 15 brought in some very useful new features to the Editor including Layer Groups and 2018 brought in some nice new search features in the Organizer. George

Hi, I normally use the Save for Web option in the File menu but the fastest way is to use the ctrl+s keyboard shortcut and choose jpeg from the file type list. George

@@HTGGeorge thanks 😀 I'm using the newest version of elements and WOW can it do a lot compared to the Canon software. You have a new subscriber 👍

Thanks! welcome aboard George

And don't forget to subscribe kzfaq.infofeatured?sub_confirmation=1

Hi Rich, just go to the description under the video and click Show More to see the full description. The download link is there. George

You can try resetting the program back to the factory defaults by holding down the ctrl+shift+alt keys while the program is launching. This will of course also reset any customized settings you put in but it often will clear up odd behavior.

@@HTGGeorge . Thank you. I have set it back to defaults and it has become responsive again. Now I just have to figure out how it supposed to work.

@@skins3738 You're welcome!

Thanks Frank, wow, that is a high tolerance setting. The default setting is 32, I normally leave mine there but I increased it in this video to get a larger selection. Basically the tolerance setting controls how many more colors the magic wand selects besides the one you clicked on. A low setting will select colors that closely match what you clicked on, as you increase that setting it will grab more and more colors outside of what you clicked. A setting of 280 will select the whole page, which would give you a pure white layer mask since the whole page is selected. The 3 check boxes do different things, the first check box samples from all layers, that should normally be left unchecked since you will usually only be creating a selection for one layer. The second box controls whether the magic wand selects everything on the page that matches what you clicked on or only spots that also touch what you clicked on. Having it checked will only make a selection for areas that are touching the original click point, unchecked selects from the whole image. In this project unchecked is the way to go. I normally leave the setting unchecked as well. The third check box will smooth out the edges of the selection, normally I leave that checked, in this video it really does not matter since we are selecting from a threshold layer to create a layer mask. You can always soften the edge of a layer mask if needed by using the Gausian Blur filter on the layer mask with a low setting like 5. George

Hi Frank, not sure where the problem could be. This basic technique works with versions older than PSE 11. Here are the basic steps for the layer mask Duplicate the image layer Use the Threshold Adjustment to convert the new layer into pure black and white Use the Magic Wand to create your selection on that layer, to be safe switch at this point to the Move Tool, don't touch the selection once it is made Leaving that selection active, move back to the image layer Click the Layer Mask button, this will give you the correct layer mask based on the selection. I have tried this several times and I can't get it to give me a pure white layer with this technique. It will give a pure white layer if you lose the selection when you move to the image layer. So when you move to the Image Layer look at the image and make sure that the selection is still active. To guarantee that, add these steps: After you create the selection using the Magic Wand, go to Select/Save Selection and save that selection, give it a name of Tree Now move to the Image Layer Go back to the Select Menu and this time choose Load Selection and choose Tree from the drop down list This will guarantee that the selection is active. Now hit the Layer Mask button and you should be fine.

Hi, trying to get through the video in less than a half hour (just made it at 29:51), most of the few complaints I get are that I go to slow. KZfaq has a setting that allows you to slow down video playback. Click on the Gear icon in the lower right corner of the KZfaq video player then to the right of Speed, click on Normal. It will popup a box with several speed selections for both slower and faster playback. George

Sorry, I don't speak German. George

Hi Sunndog, you mean you want to take the sun off of the dog? Doesn't really fit your channel name. Anyway you can tone down the brightness on the right side of the dog by using a duplicate layer and adding a Levels Adjustment Layer to that new layer, then using Levels bring down the brightness by using the white slider on the bottom scale. Then use the layer mask (black hides, white shows) to only show the parts of that adjusted layer that are on the bright parts of the photo. But in my opinion bringing down the highlights on the right side of the dog picture does not improve the picture. Anything you do to try and change that lighting will look unnatural. The big problem here is that anything you do to lower the values in that highlight area also bring down the contrast in that area, which then makes for a bad match with the non-highlight areas. Trying to put back in some contrast to correct that just makes the matter worse. It is very hard to successfully knock down highlight areas in a photo. Adding highlights in works great, taking highlights out not so much. George

Thanks George. It seems I'm always trying to do the impossible right off the bat.

Thanks George. It seems I'm always trying to do the impossible right off the bat.

You're welcome, I know it seems like programs like Photoshop and Photoshop Elements can do just about anything. Unfortunately that isn't the case. They can do amazing things, if the original photos will work. I actually spend most of my time on the KZfaq videos finding good photos that will work with my demos. Today I am recording a quick video on a nice little set of free filters for Photoshop Elements that took me only a few minutes to get the hang of but I have already spent quite a while trying to find one or two good photos to use in the video. So everything really comes back to having good photos to start with. Sometimes you have what you have, then all you can do is do the best job you can and accept that some problems just can't be fixed. George

Far from perfect, but this is what I ended up with. It's not bad if you stand about 6 feet from your screen! ;-) imgur.com/8C63X1r

Hi Adrian, thanks for watching my video. My channel is about Teaching how to use Photoshop Elements and Photoshop, not how to do fast tricks. Plenty of other great channels on KZfaq for fast tricks. So since I am teaching and not just demonstrating you will find that my videos are almost always longer than other channels. On the plus side I don't fill my videos with KZfaq ads, you won't ever have to look at an ad in the middle of one of my videos. George