Ant control in PSE4

[mike butler]

Hi all,

 

I'm bumping up against a problem that I couldn't find in a search, though I'm sure it's old

hat to the more experienced.

 

I'm working on an image where I've made a mask of the sky, with the magic wand tool,

and made a levels adjustment in a new layer. This gives me a rather harsh outline that I

can't seem to soften with various pixel-radius tries in Gaussian blur. Actually, the blur

looks pretty good at 100 percent, but at a reduced size I can see the ants.

 

Unfortunately, I'm learning through on-line printing at the moment, so I'm not quite sure

what I'm seeing on screen is what I'll be getting.

 

Thanks for any tips.

 

Mike

(moving printer purchase up the agenda and going back to canned beer)

[denisgermain]

Lesson 1: making a selection is usually the worst method available...

Here is a simple way to do it (better)

 

1. OPen the image

2. Create a duplicate layer (CTRL+J)

3. Make the adjustments on the duplicated layer for your sky

4. Erase or mask the rest of the image.... to make the original colors visible.

[mike butler]

Thanks Denis. I'll work on that.

[vadim_makarov]

Select using Magic Wand, then clear up at the borders manually (Lasso tool, add/subtract to the selection with Alt+/Shift+), and don't forget to check for small islands, too, at 100% or larger magnification. Save the selection. Deselect. Go to the saved layer and do Posterize, which will make the selection sharp (no intermediate values left by Magic Wand). Load selection, Contract (experiment by how many pixels), Feather (experiment by how many pixels). Make the desired layer adjustments and see the result. Return to Load Selection and try different Contract and Feather values if necessary. That's how I'd do it.

 

Not all pictures and not all adjustments on the sky allow nice border, of course.