Help a newbie with masks?

[Andy_F]

I recently created a photo from my brother-in-law's wedding: he and his wife during the 'sand ceremony'. I took the photo and did the following:

1. Copied the layer.
2. On one layer I erased everything but the flowers
3. On the other layer, I erased the flowers.
4. I then made all but the flowers black and white and got a really nice black and white picture with color flowers.

The problem is, the two didn't quite match up and I had to do some cloning to fill in the spots where they didn't.

I am pretty sure that I can mask the flowers and then turn the rest B & W, then invert the mask to, say, bump up the saturation of the flowers to make them pop, but I'm not sure how.

I have searched around for a tutorial on how to do this, but have only found ones that show how to do gradient masks, etc - not quite the effect I am looking for.

Can anyone point me to a resource that would help?

Thanks in advance,

Andy

[LeviFiction]

Why did you erase all but the flowers on one layer and then erase the flowers on the other layer? Isn't that doing way too much work?

Okay here are two tutorials that I know of that do something similar to the effect you want. Though they were done with older versions of Paint Shop Pro so some of the stuff might be a little older but they should both work in about the same way.

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/paints ... p_1jet.htm

That one gives you some pretty advanced methods for masking. Because masks are just 8-bit images (black & white) so to use a mask you paint in black or white...or a grey for translucency. (Black conceals & white reveals) So these give you an example of using the image to define the mask for you or using selection tools to make a mask.

This next tutorial demonstrates the method I prefer, similar to the one you tried, when advanced masking techniques are not required.

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/ ... 3086372378

You duplicate the layer, but you turn the top layer black and white. Then using the eraser to erase the portions of the top layer that you want to have in color. This allows the color version of the image to show through the background. Since the eraser manipulates how transparent pixels are you can left-click to add transparency or right-click to remove transparency (make the image opaque) giving you just as much ability as you get with a paint brush. Then if you wanted the flowers to be more saturated you just select the bottom layer and run a saturation adjustment on it. Simple.

[Andy_F]

Why did you erase all but the flowers on one layer and then erase the flowers on the other layer? Isn't that doing way too much work?

Hence the term 'newbie' in the subject......<grin>

It was the only way I could figure out to turn the picture B&W and leave the flowers color.

Thanks for the help!

Andy

[SnedekerDesignz]

Here's another way:

Duplicate the layer
Make the top one black/white
Delete the flowers

[LeviFiction]

You duplicate the layer, but you turn the top layer black and white. Then using the eraser to erase the portions of the top layer that you want to have in color.

You may have described it better but I said it first. Haha.

But, yes it is that simple.