HUE and SATURATION

Now that you’ve got a selected area (the wall in this case); go to Image: Adjustments: Hue/Saturation.

Click on the Colorize box. Now you can move the Hue sliders around to choose a value which you can preview in real-time to see your wall change color.

 This is cool because, if you’ll notice that the wall is still retaining its ‘texture’ and isn’t just being ‘filled’ with a solid color. This makes Hue/Saturation a great adjustment tool. You can use it a lot for such things as changing the color of people’s clothes or hair.

By moving the saturation slider to the right you are increasing the density of the color and moving it to the left de-saturates ultimately at grey itself with a setting of zero. Experiment around with changing the hue and saturation of your selection.

It’s a very handy dandy tool that you’ll want to keep in mind. Use it easily if you want to change the color of something (if you have an easy selection job!).

Grab another image that has a nice simple background that would be easy to select with the tragic wand which in this case would be magic wand. You’ll learn to use tools in different situations. For example it doesn’t make sense to use the hand drawn lasso which would be a painstaking job when you can just use the magic wand.

 In the Basic Photoshop training program I teach you how to combine several different selection tools together in different circumstances for the least possible amount of work on your part.

With a mid tolerance you should easily select the sky because the color range of the point you click on will cover the sky without selection the darker mountains and monument.

 Once you’ve made a selection duplicate the background layer by dragging it to the new layer icon. The selection will still be there and as long as you just drag another layer in the palette without first clicking on it you will still be on the layer that you were working on. Always be aware of what layer you’re working on. This can be a little confusing for beginners when you wonder what’s going on; you’re probably not on the layer you wanted to be on.

In this case make sure that you have the duplicated layer of the background highlighted in the layers palette. This is the layer you’re going to ‘cut’ the selection from. Now go to Edit: Cut or Ctrl X to get rid of that sky.

 In this tutorial I’m going to get a sunset image from my Photos.com collection that I’ll use to replace for a new background. File: Browse to bring up the file browser or use File: Open to find an image to use as a new background.

Select the file in the browser and open it. Go to the moVe tool and click in the new image and drag it over into the document you’re working on.

 When you drag a layer in, it will appear on top of whatever layer was selected in the layers palette.

 You can highlight a layer by Ctrl clicking on the icon in the layers palette.  Nevermind the magic wand doing its own thing (I should have captured with the pointer on top of the highlighted layer icon..forgive me I have sinned).

Move the layers around in the layers palette so that the sunset is below the foreground layer of the monument.

Moving the layers in the layers palette only changes their order of appearance (vertically in a sense) from foreground to background with the topmost layers being on top of the ‘stack’. In the actual document window you can move the layers around with the moVe tool on their own ‘invisible plane’ or order of appearance in the stack. To move a layer around it must be selected in the layers palette or linked to another layer.

Here is the image with the monument selection highlighted (ctrl click layer icon) and the sunset background underneath it in the layers palette.

 It is essential to understand and master the power of layers. You can gain this mastery with the Basic Photoshop DVD Training program.

To top the simple training exercise off, try changing the blending mode of the top layer of the monument. Now you’ve cut out a background and put in a new one!  The possibilities are limitless, believe me.