How do I... move the birds

[stormchaser]

I want to move two birds in a picture. Place them close to the other birds without them touching those birds. Can I do this and how? This is the image I want to do this too. Notice the two birds on the end of in flight I want to move those two.

[LindaSue]

Something like this?

I just used the freehand selection tool with feather set to 3 to make a quick selection around one of the ducks and its shadow (hold down the Shift key to add the shadow to the duck selection). I pasted this as a new layer and positioned it in the new location. I then zoomed in close and cleaned up the edges around the duck where needed then repeated the same thing with the other duck. After I moved the two ducks, I used the Clone tool to remove them from the old location.

[stormchaser]

Thank you for replying. I am totally new and wanted to get to using Paint Shop I haven't done much with it except in the Presets. Where is the freehand selection tool and the Clone tool?

Something like this?

Ducks.jpg

I just used the freehand selection tool with feather set to 3 to make a quick selection around one of the ducks and its shadow (hold down the Shift key to add the shadow to the duck selection). I pasted this as a new layer and positioned it in the new location. I then zoomed in close and cleaned up the edges around the duck where needed then repeated the same thing with the other duck. After I moved the two ducks, I used the Clone tool to remove them from the old location.

[hartpaul]

Hi Stormchaser,
Which version of PSP are you using. It is not clear in your profile where it says paintshop pro 8 - 6 - 4. Do you really mean you are using the old versions PSP8, PSP6, and PSP4 or PSP X8 (18), PSP X6 (16) and PSP X4 (14).
If you are using PSP X8 then you can use the new feature Magic Move .
Third tool down Selection - choose the Freehand Selection with Selection Type Freehand, Mode Replace.
Draw around the birds and their shadows, Click the red cross under Action, move the two birds to the required location and release and the area where they came from will be filled in. Do Selections > Select None . You can tidy the filled in area using a clone action.

[trueblue]

I have PaintShop Pro X8 which has recently been released.
As Paul stated there are features for removing objects and moving objects.

Here is your photo with the two ducks removed from the far right and placed in front of the others.

I first used X8 move tool. Drew with the freehand with a feather of 22.
I then moved the birds over to the left. These birds are placed on a new layer above the photograph.
I went back to the original photo, drew another freehand selection and this time used the Magic Fill. This removes the bird images and fills the area with content surrounding the birds.
The newly placed birds needed a little tidying so I chose the eraser with an opacity of 40, hardness 20; I left the other settings as default.
I dabbed around the birds to soften the edges.
I cropped the image to remove some of the foreground and this is the result.

[stormchaser]

Sorry I got called away. I am on call. What I wanted to accomplish was to move the birds closer together without overlapping them. Yours looks good never thought about putting the birds in front. The thing is the front bird towards the bottom is too far from the flock. But I still like the photo. I am using PSP 8 Ultimate. I like it so far. I also have versions 4 and 6, and I am not sure if I can delete them or not since I upgraded. When you upgrade some software requires you to keep the old version. My biggest problem with version 8 is finding the tool stuff I need to use. I am totally lost. Has anyone ever thought of doing a screenshot and pointing where all the tools are and what they do? That would be great.

[JoeB]

Sorry I got called away. I am on call. What I wanted to accomplish was to move the birds closer together without overlapping them. Yours looks good never thought about putting the birds in front. The thing is the front bird towards the bottom is too far from the flock. But I still like the photo. I am using PSP 8 Ultimate. I like it so far. I also have versions 4 and 6, and I am not sure if I can delete them or not since I upgraded. When you upgrade some software requires you to keep the old version. My biggest problem with version 8 is finding the tool stuff I need to use. I am totally lost. Has anyone ever thought of doing a screenshot and pointing where all the tools are and what they do? That would be great.

First, I assume that you are speaking of Corel Paintshop Pro X4, X6 and X8. Versions referred to as 4, 6, and 8 without the X are usually referring to the earlier versions of Paint Shop Pro when it was owned and developed by Jasc Software before they sold it to Corel.

That said, if you are familiar with X6 then X8 shouldn't take too much of a learning curve to master although, of course, there are new tools. Again, I have to assume you are having problems locating the newer tools like the Move tool used by some who posted replies to you. To learn the location of the new tools in X8 and a brief look at how they work you can go to this link for the short videos Corel has posted which highlight those tools:

http://learn.corel.com/photo/tutorials/ ... d=phototag

On another note, esthetically my preference for moving the birds is to simply move the two that are at the back closer to the two in front of them, not putting them at the front of the flock. The reason for this is because we naturally tend to think of geese flying in a V formation, with a lead goose with the otherss behind forming the V. You don't normally see 2 geese in front and then a single one centered behind them. The attached is my take on it:

[stormchaser]

I never thought about the V formation. Makes sense. Nice picture. Thank you. Plus a big thank you for the link to the tutorial.

[Kathy_9]

I also have versions 4 and 6, and I am not sure if I can delete them or not since I upgraded. When you upgrade some software requires you to keep the old version.

If you no longer want the older versions you can uninstall them without impacting X8. Upgrade refers to the pricing structure only; the older software is not upgraded or "built upon".

[JoeB]

I have been experimenting with the Smart Carver tool in PSP and decided to try it on your original image to achieve what you want - that is, moving the last two birds closer to the flight. Using Smart Carver to do this results in narrowing the image horizontally but can leave the height the same, throwing off the aspect ratio. So I also used Smart Carver to resize vertically as well to maintain the aspect ratio, resulting in a somewhat smaller image of 706 x 471 pixels. However, this was done simply to test out the Smart Carver tool, and not necessary given that you can obtain the result you want with other tools and keep the original file size as shown earlier in this thread. One difference, however, is that Smart Carver maintains the proportion of water distance between the last two (moved) birds and the right edge of the image that you have in the original, while just moving the birds creates more water space on the right.

NOTE however that when I did it I was a bit sloppy with the Preserve masking brush and didn't properly mask the right wing of the last bird near the lower river bank, so in this result that wing is partially squished. I didn't bother going back to mask it properly because this was just a test run and other than my sloppiness it shows another option for your issue. Here's the Smart Carver result, attached.

[stormchaser]

@JoeB Not bad though at least I know I have options to use. You just need to be careful. Thanks.

[MarkZ]

I just used the freehand selection tool with feather set to 3 to make a quick selection around one of the ducks and its shadow.

Ducks? Canada geese! . . . Sorry, couldn't resist.