well I watched the video of magic brush in action and it seemed really cool - too good to be true obviously. I've tried it on a few different photos of my boys but it totally fails to cut them out, grabbing large parts of the background and severing my boys in multiple places. Really we need decent AI that can recognise people and cut them out properly. Similarly the auto anti-red eye isn't that good, it just bungs a black blob over the red pupil but doesn't tone down any red areas on the iris caused by reflection/defraction or whatever. Even the auto levels fix is a bit OTT, it's better doing it manually. Basically seems like the fancy gimmicks look cool on paper, but are crap in reality... glad mine cost £20 off ebay and wasn't the full £400 package...
Magic Brush is crap in Photoshop elements
Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Magic Brush is crap in Photoshop elements Photshop elements or Photoshop?
Photoshops Magic Wand Brush is awesome. All you have to do is lower the tolerence and it selects less. Don't know if PhotoShop Elements has this.
It's PhotoShop That costs the 400 quids not elements.
Photoshops Magic Wand Brush is awesome. All you have to do is lower the tolerence and it selects less. Don't know if PhotoShop Elements has this.
It's PhotoShop That costs the 400 quids not elements.
I said elements in the thread title. Yeah I can see a tolerence options which renders it pretty damn useless. I know the main one (non-elements) if £400 which is why I'm surprised so many people seem to have a copy of it.
Well I think you said it right there, a copy of it. Mostly people in the business buy Photoshop when they can afford it.
IPete2.
[edit] I only have Photoshop Elements 2 and 3 though and they seems fine for most of my needs (my daughter loves Photoshop).
IPete2.
[edit] I only have Photoshop Elements 2 and 3 though and they seems fine for most of my needs (my daughter loves Photoshop).
A lot of us got it through strange upgrades and what not.
Personally, I got Photoshop CS and Illustrator CS for about $400 alltgether. $100 each for a student version of 7 back in art school, and another $100 each for an upgrade to CS which they said would work on a student copy.. and it did.
Personally, I got Photoshop CS and Illustrator CS for about $400 alltgether. $100 each for a student version of 7 back in art school, and another $100 each for an upgrade to CS which they said would work on a student copy.. and it did.
Paint Shop Pro 9 and a Graphics Tablet... Less that photoshop and more powerful... IF you know what you are doing...
what is magic brush? had a google for it but didnt find any real results
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The magic wand tool where you click on an area of say sky blue and the program should, depending on the tolerance levels set, intelligently select all parts of the sky so that they can easily be replaced by something else. Selecting something like the sky by hand without a magic wand tool would take ages especially if it`s a cloudy one.
In general though what do you think of Photoshop Elements Grey? I couldn`t get on with it myself and prefer PSP.
Jason.
In general though what do you think of Photoshop Elements Grey? I couldn`t get on with it myself and prefer PSP.
Jason.
Sorry, but I gotta come to the defense of PS here.
As with a lot of tools, especially really nice ones, they are only as good as the user. I'm not trying to make a personal attack here, but you really need to understand the tools to be able to use them properly.
I assume you are talking about the healing brush, which is absolutely identical in both CS and elements. This tool alone is one of the best updates in years to the PS engine, but it won't just "fix" things for you all by itself. It really is just an upgrade of the clone brush, but in addition it will blend the colors/values to make things blend much better. This can cause a problem when you are trying to retouch a high contrast edge. The edge will get blurred and pulled into the blending area, so you need to know how to mask properly to avoid that.
Post a picture example of what you are trying to do and I will try to help you a bit with it, but stop blaming the tools.
edit: ahh,... after further reading it appears you are talking about the magic wand selection tool instead. I was confused when you said magic brush. Anyways, this tool is not a good choice when trying to cut something out cleanly. I only use it for rough selections that will be cleaned up later. It works based on luminance changes, so if you have a hard edge between areas it works ok, but on a busy background it will not work as well.
As with a lot of tools, especially really nice ones, they are only as good as the user. I'm not trying to make a personal attack here, but you really need to understand the tools to be able to use them properly.
I assume you are talking about the healing brush, which is absolutely identical in both CS and elements. This tool alone is one of the best updates in years to the PS engine, but it won't just "fix" things for you all by itself. It really is just an upgrade of the clone brush, but in addition it will blend the colors/values to make things blend much better. This can cause a problem when you are trying to retouch a high contrast edge. The edge will get blurred and pulled into the blending area, so you need to know how to mask properly to avoid that.
Post a picture example of what you are trying to do and I will try to help you a bit with it, but stop blaming the tools.
edit: ahh,... after further reading it appears you are talking about the magic wand selection tool instead. I was confused when you said magic brush. Anyways, this tool is not a good choice when trying to cut something out cleanly. I only use it for rough selections that will be cleaned up later. It works based on luminance changes, so if you have a hard edge between areas it works ok, but on a busy background it will not work as well.
ta Quick. Thinking about it I should have known what it was, I use the Magic wand all the time in PSP
yeah I meant wand, sorry for the brush confusion. Basically the demo shows them drawing on a dog and it gets cut out amazingly and pasted on another picture. But on the photos I've tried it on, it's miserable. I haven't used Elements enought to get the hang of it yet, I was fiddling with it last night. I've been using Gimp 2.x for several months now (after getting into BMax and needed Png with alpha support) because my old PSP and Corel Paint no longer cut it. I got peed off with Gimp not having primatives like rectangles and circles (although you can achieve this with the selection tool) and kep seeing people doing cool font stuff in photoshop so thought I'd look into getting it. BUT at £400 or whatever, I wasn't into it, and I didn't want to warez it, so I got elements which I heard was the same but with some high end stuff that "noone really uses" removed. Only to find the magic wand doesn't have a tolerance slider, great!...
Grey, have a look at this webpage, it depicts a tolerance value for the magic wand tool. As I haven`t got access to the program at the mo I cannot check myself.
Jason.
Jason.
linky ;-)
along the top of the screen, right under the row of icons will be preferences for the current tool.
If you look there you will see a text box for tolerance. That is the amount of luminance change from the original pick that will be selected.
Another tool that may work better for you is the magnetic lasso tool. This works similar to the lasso tool, but it snaps to any high contrast edge it gets close to.
Like I stated before, it is not the best way to make cutouts though. The best way is to use layer masks, which are available in elements, although you have to do a bit of tweaking to be able to use them in elements. (they are in there, but hidden, and you will need to download an action to be able to use them)
If you look there you will see a text box for tolerance. That is the amount of luminance change from the original pick that will be selected.
Another tool that may work better for you is the magnetic lasso tool. This works similar to the lasso tool, but it snaps to any high contrast edge it gets close to.
Like I stated before, it is not the best way to make cutouts though. The best way is to use layer masks, which are available in elements, although you have to do a bit of tweaking to be able to use them in elements. (they are in there, but hidden, and you will need to download an action to be able to use them)
hmm OK thanks. I tried the lasso too, interesting. But best results are still manual cut and manual blend of edges imho.
But best results are still manual cut and manual blend of edges imho.
correct. Which is where layer masks come in. They allow you to very quickly add/subtract to your masked area without deleting any of your original pixels. That way you can tweak the details all you wish without destroying any info.
The full version of PS has a tool that allows you to select a color range. That is my favorite when it comes to making a basic mask selection, but I always finish with a layer mask anyways.
Here is a link that will give you some actions for elements like layer masks. Go and get these, and if you have any trouble just ask for help and I'll do what I can.
http://www.cavesofice.org/~grant/Challenge/Tools/index.html
http://www.cavesofice.org/~grant/Challenge/Tools/index.html
Well, to get a clean cut of a figure is not realy that easy however wonderfull these tools are; some skill is needed. You should also consider that not every photo will be as good, a figure that is very similar to the background in color and tone will always be difficult to cut out. Even if you've got an ideal source, you'll still need to do some work to make it perfect. And how do you achieve perfection, work man! Of course the terrible thing is that even if others say your results are great, you will never be truely satisfied; but that is a different story.
Keep on trying, you'll only get better, and one word of advice: work at the highest resolution you can 300ppp at least; you can always downgrade once you've finished
Keep on trying, you'll only get better, and one word of advice: work at the highest resolution you can 300ppp at least; you can always downgrade once you've finished
Paint Shop (at least version 9, that I own) is fantastic with that brush! I'd highly recommend PS for this.
The GIMP if I recall had a nice "magic brush" too.
The GIMP if I recall had a nice "magic brush" too.