Move and Erase skyline/horizon help needed

[Moonbeam1 Profile]

Oy. Have read posts and viewed tutorials numerous times. Just not getting it for more complex erasure and move. And their have been pretty explicit instructions so I feel pretty dumb.

So I have a colorful skyline/horizon that I need to move down to bottom of picture. There is a pole that runs through the middle vertically that I need to keep in place. I have tried other methods such as overlay, underlay, composite, etc. and the ERASE function seems like it would work best for my needs. I can get little parts to get what I want to do but the entire length and width is a problem. I have tried pins and warping and small brush size and large brush size all to awful results. I keep getting parts of the picture I don't want involved. I finally figured out that, I think, that I need to select the bottom area first and then do the procedure but this only works to a point. I also discovered that once I make a selection I can keep clicking one against the other during placement and I don't need to keep selecting a new area. Again, this only works up to a point and then a piece I don't want shows up. Then I try to move the selection around and that works, slightly and sometimes.

Then to top it off figuring out how to get rid of the old horizon is driving me crazy. I have tried every which way I can think of but no go.

Should I post my pic for help?

Thanks,
Phoebe

[Moonbeam1 Profile]

It took two days but I finally figured out a way to do what I wanted to do. Not sure if there was an easier way or not, but end result is what I wanted. A post elsewhere in the forums helped. I needed to crop away most of the extraneous background using another software program because the crop tool in SPE is way too basic. Would be nice to offer more crop style selections.

Select COMPOSITE with original pic as base and load cropped pic as OVERLAY. Then select ERASE tool and erase away. This part took many tries as there has got to be an easier way to utilize this great feature. One HUGE request is one I have seen mentioned, PLEASE is there an SPE release coming wherein when you erase something and then have to erase more areas, you don't get a million red and blue thingys all over the pic? I know when you move the cursor off the pic they go away, but the problem is they come back UNLESS YOU RE-SELECT ERASE feature and start another erase session.

Now all I have left to do is create some glow lighting....

Thanks,
Phoebe

[admin]

Hi Phoebe,

If you post a pic of your before and after here, I might be able to provide some tips if you ever wanted to do it again. I'm having difficulty picturing exactly what you mean!

Tony

[Moonbeam1 Profile]

Good Morning

Here are the pics I have been working on:

This is the original

1st one

Tiny Original EmeryRETOUCH2to turn into night.jpg (1.02 MiB) Viewed 16922 times

This is the new background with the horizon too high

This is the back ground with horizon too high

No moon no line without blip at bottom Internet Dusk Original copy_pe_pe.jpg (947.92 KiB) Viewed 16922 times

This is the one with the horizon lowered and have started to add lighting effects. You should know for your purposes of trying to figure out the crashing issue that when trying to add the lighting effects SPE crashed at a minimum of 10 times, especially when trying to utilize the mini gallery which I got to see in action once before the crashing started again. It was a tease LOL because it was a wonderful feature that I was unable to continue using. Being able to see the effect only on the portion I needed to create the effect was fantastic

I worked for hours trying to find "glow" or light beams to eminate from the light fixtures and shine on certain areas of sculpture. and could use help on this if possible.

Getting there

LIGHT BULBS ADDED.jpg (1.7 MiB) Viewed 16922 times

I tried to add what effect I am talking about but I am allowed to upload only 3 pics at a time so I will post additional mssg.

Can't wait to hear from you,
Phoebe

[Moonbeam1 Profile]

Here is what I am trying to do now:

Need this TYPE of effect from light fixtures

Lightbulb glow 1.jpg (64.9 KiB) Viewed 16922 times

[Moonbeam1 Profile]

Closest I could get without creating my own effect, which I found very difficult to work with, I think I'm too new for that level yet, was using the STARBURST EFFECT which took me forever to find. By the way, there are tons and tons of duplicate type effects...or is it my imagination? And many, many do nothing to pic when selected. But that's ok for now because there are gems to be found.

Starburst Effect ALL LIGHTS_pe_pe_pe.jpg (1.91 MiB) Viewed 16916 times

[admin]

Hi Phoebe,

Couple of tips:

Regarding the horizon being too high originally, here's what I would have done:

Load in the weathervane.
Go into composite
Add in the sunset as an underlay
Erase the original sky
stretch the sunset downwards by going into Move,Rotate,Scale and pulling the bottom of it down. That would lower the horizon.


Regarding putting your own starburst in:
Get a starburst picture, but make sure it fades to black in the areas you don't want covered. Make sure it goes to black softly at the edges otherwise you'll see an edge.
Load it into the composite mode as an overlay.
Change the blending mode to "Add", and the black bits will disappear.
Move it around using Move,Rotate,Scale.

Regarding the crash:
Do you remember the name of the effect that was crashing? Do you know how many pixels your image had?


Hope that helps!

Tony

[Moonbeam1 Profile]

Good morning.

NOW you tell me, lol! I guess you were off for the weekend
But I didn't mind terribly much, it have me the chance to really explore the program. I think I'll try your suggestions anyway to see if the finished project looks any better than what I have. One of the problems I was having working in UNDERLAY mode was seeing/working with the layers separately. But I'll try again. The black sky needs tweaking anyway, when viewed enlarged it has too many variations.

I think the pixels may be too high for efficient editing, I'll have to check. What is the suggested pixel size for a photo that will be seen online and in print, possibly as large as 8x10?

As for name of effect that caused crashing, as I have mentioned previously in various posts, there are many, many effects and actions that cause crashing. I'll try to keep track from now on and let you know.

Regards,
Phoebe

[Moonbeam1 Profile]

Help! Trying your suggestions after having made some changes to original. I am now in composite mode. I have been erasing original lighter blue sky but when I get to top of pic it won't let me go any further. I can not for the life of me figure out how to access the original to delete the top bluer portion of the sky. If I move the underlay up to have the black portion at the top also it moves the horizon higher again. I wish there was a way to work with moving the original and the underlay. This is why I did mine with subject as OVERLAY. Please advise.

Phoebe

[admin]

Hi Phoebe,

I'm not quite sure exactly what you mean, so I'll have a guess: You should be stretching the underlay downwards (by grabbing the little square at the bottom of the underlay), not moving it. That means you wont end up with a gap at the top of your picture where there is no underlay.

If there was some way of moving the original, it would mean SPE would have to make up what there was in the place where you moved it away, that's essentially what the montage function does. If you want you could start with a montage with a size larger than your original, then add the sunset followed by the original both as overlays.

Re: the crashing: Do the crashes happen if you go directly into the gallery, or only when you've already applied some/many tools/effects? Also what size is your image?

Thanks

Tony