Hi Dori,
You can do that to anything simply by selecting the section or piece that you wish to affect. Not just making it lighter, but any affect or colour that is included in PSE. If it is particularly fine, you may need to use something like the magic wand to get started and then magnify to see more closely the pixels you want.
Does that help you get started?
Cheers
Hi Dori,
Another way is to select some of the lace then make a pattern out of it … Edit>Define Pattern
Then using Layer>New fill layer>Pattern … you will be able to fill the whole of the background with your lace pattern. When you are going the fill you will also be able to change the size of your new pattern.
Wendy
Thanks Wendy and Jim,
I didn’t explain myself well. Let me try again. I saw this done once, but they were using a tool in photoshop that’s not in elements. I still think you can do it…but a different way.
They used a picture of a bride – so I’m using that as an example, but of course it could apply to anything.
But you have a picture of a bride. You make a copy of a piece of the lace. I’m not sure what you do to get it larger, but then you cut the opacity of that way, way down. (that’s what I meant about making it lighter..but forgot the word)
Then you use that for a background. Somehow you resize that or the picture of the bride (maybe both) and lay the picture of the bride over the lace, so her own bridal dress is sort of a mat.
The picture of the bride is smaller somehow than the mat made from lace. Frankly, I don’t know how to do any of this…so your help (step by step for dummies) would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much.
Dori
Well, I am fairly new to Elements myself but…
The way I would approach this would be to use a selection brush, lasso, or another selection tool to get a sample of the lace you want from the bride picture.
Once you have a selection of what you want (you will have the blinking line around the lace) go to Edit "Cut".
Now, close the original picture of the bride, and DO NOT SAVE… otherwise you will save the picture with the lace missing.
Then, go to File, Open New… and select "Image From Clipboard". This should open the sample of lace that you cut out of the bride photo just a moment ago. You can now edit this picture of the lace anyway you like… resize it, adjust the contrast, color, etc. If you open the layers palatte you should see only one layer (the lace picture) you can adjust the opacity of the this layer in the layers palette and make the lace as light as you want.
You can also Resize the image to any size you want (i.e. if you need to make it bigger to be a background) by going to Image – Resize. Once you have the lace image as light as you want, the size you want, etc. save it as a file, like lace.jpg or something like that.
Then, open up the original picture of the bride. Using a lasso tool, selection brush, color wand, etc. select the bride in the picture (in the same you you selected the lace.) Once you have the whole bride selected, cut her out as well (again, as you did the lace). Then, if you open up the lace.jpg image you made, you can paste the bride onto it as a new layer.
You should now have the bride on a light background of lace.
Again, I am new to Elements, so I would imagine you can get better advice, but that is how I would do it with the skills I currently have.
Let me know if you have any questions about this approach.
Jon
Dori,
Yes that is what I thought you wanted to do …
Try selecting an area of the lace, make a pattern from it then fill the background with the pattern …. put a new layer below it, fill with a pale shade (white, cream etc) and lower the opacity of the pattern layer.
All you need to do then it put the bride on top of it …
Wendy
