I now remember why I haven’t updated my contemporary quilts website for a while. It’s because I wanted to use some better quilt images which means spending more time nutting out Photoshop Elements which has to be one of the most frustrating software applications around. Take this photo of my latest quilt, for example:
You will see that I have done a facing finish on the quilt (see my facing tutorial). Now to show this finish to its best effect, I would like to crop out the grey/white background. I know about the magic eraser and magic extractor tools in Photoshop, and I’ve watched this video tutorial and this video tutorial many times, BUT whenever I try to use these functions I end up with shaggy bits hanging off my quilts. So then I try to clean these bits using the manual eraser function except it doesn’t have the precision I’m looking for and I end up nudging the quilt so that it looks like Pac Man got loose. Of course the manual is of little or no assistance with the questions I have and I seem to waste vast amounts of time experimenting to no avail.
In the end, I usually retreat to the Arcsoft Photoimpression software that came with my camera. It’s pretty basic but it lets me do most things I want including cropping, resizing, fixing colour and lighting and adding text. However, I really would like to get on better speaking terms with Photoshop Elements so if anyone can recommend some useful online tutorials, please let me know!
Tracey Petersen says
My sister does beautiful work with Photoshop, but she uses a tablet and pen rather than a mouse. She says it makes the world of difference to her accuracy.
Dianna in Maui says
Hi Brenda, I don’t know about online tutorials, but Scott Kelby’s book, “Photoshop Elements 5 Book for Digital Photographers” is a great reference. Also, do you have a Wacom tablet? A friend of mine has one (and I’m lusting over it) and she says it’s perfect for the detail work you are talking about. Hope this helps.