Changing leaf tone

[FlyingKiwiGirl]

Could someone help me please with changing the tone of the big leaf in this photo, I have PSE9(and still learning) and have attempted to do it (see this thread- Exhibition worthy?) by selecting the leaf with the magnetic lasso tool and then changing the colour but when I looked close I haven't quite got the edges right. I'm happy to redo it like that if that is the way but I was wondering if I'm making hard work of it. Thanks for any help.

[edbayani]

one way is to use quickmask and vary the sharpness of your brush to match the edge that you are selecting. exit quickmask and go to hue and saturation, check the colorize box and move the hue slider and the saturation slider to change the hue.

[SusanH1970]

Originally Posted by edbayani

one way is to use quickmask and vary the sharpness of your brush to match the edge that you are selecting. exit quickmask and go to hue and saturation, check the colorize box and move the hue slider and the saturation slider to change the hue.

Nice work, Ed!

[ArmySoldier777]

Originally Posted by SusanH1970

Nice work, Ed!

+1. I don't think I could've done a better job. It looks great

[edbayani]

thank you, Susan and David....

[FlyingKiwiGirl]

Thanks so much edbayani! Elements doesn't have a quick mask but I fumbled my way through it and I think I managed to follow along with what you were suggesting using a new layer & the quick selection tool and I especially liked the hue & saturation etc part of the repair, looks more natural.

Here's my finished photo, my leaf isn't so bright but I think it's more in keeping when you see the whole shot. Just one more thing, I'm still struggling with the line around the edge when I zoom in close, how do you suggest I soften that. I've tried a few tools but there are so many and so many variations to use on each. I'd like to know the "proper" way to fix it if that's possible.

Thanks again.

[edbayani]

FKG sorry i am not familiar with any other editing software except photoshop. have you tried feathering the selection about 2 pixels before applying the hue and saturation? Or maybe if you can select the leaf with a little more of the background and if you can put this in another layer in elements, then apply the hue and saturation and with the eraser tool with soft setting, erase the excess background?

[Steve_S]

I'm afaid they have killed your shadow and highlight detail. How about something like this......................




In elements , you don't have layer masks (if i remember right), but you can cheat to get the effect. Here is how i did it in cs4

Make a dup. background layer ---edit ---fill---color (choose a dark brown color)---click ok.
Set blend mode to soft light---add layer mask to hide all (mask box is black, here is where you can cheat---------when you make a duplicate layer, just click on any adjustment layer and don't make any adjustments. Click on the mask box and fill it with black. Click on the box to the left and fill with dark brown color and change blend mode to soft light.) Next click on the mask box---grab a soft adjustment brush set to 100%--forground color to white---carefully paint in over the leaf---when done, add a 3 pix gaussian blur (filter--blur--gaussian blur---3pix---ok)

After i did that , the effect wasn't strong enough, so i duplicated that layer to double the power of the effect(which was too much, so i reduced the opacity to my liking)

Hope this helps