Creating Embellishments from Your Disney Memorabilia Part 2

This is Part 2 in a series of posts showing you how to make embellishments our of scanned Disney Memorabilia. Throughout these tutorials I will be using Photoshop Elements 10 to show you 3 techniques I use when working with Disney memorabilia.

Part 1 : Using the Marquee Tool to create a basic shape Element – Great for stickers and objects that are circles and squares.

Part 2 : Using the Magic Wand to create an irregular shape Element (high contrast background) – Great for solid color elements on a white background.

Part 3 : Using the Magnetic Lasso Tool to create an irregular shape Element (low contrast background) – Works with any image where the borders are blurred by similar colors.

Today we are working with irregular shapes that are on a high contrast background. (think dark sticker on a white background) The only tool you will need today is:

Magic Wand Tool – The marquee magic wand tool will automatically select an area of a certain tone or color

Creating Scrapbook Embellishments from Disney Memorabilia using Photoshop PSE 10

Magic Wand Tool

Once you have an image scanned and imported into Photoshop, the first thing you need to do is Layer from Background. Most scanned in objects will be created as a background layer that cannot be modified. Right click on the layer with the memorabilia on it and click ‘Layer from Background‘. You can now edit the image.

Layer from Background

Step 1: Make sure you have clicked on the layer with the element and then click on the magic want tool. At the top of the screen set the tolerance low if there is a large contrast (black to white) or a set the tolerance high if it low contrast (red to orange). Make sure Anti-Alias is checked, Contiguous is not checked, and Sample All Layers is not checked.

HINT: If you check contiguous that all of that color will be selected. So in this case not only would the white around the sticker be selected but also the white on the sticker. Sometimes this is handy but not in the case of making an element.

Step 1: Set Preferences

Step 2: Now just click on the space around the element and the background is selected. For intricate shapes you may want to further smooth out the edges. To do this click on Refine Edge at the top of the screen. A pop up box will appear with some options for selecting the image. With the preview box check move the Smooth lever slowly to the right. You will only need to set this between 3-5 pixels to smooth out most image.

HINT: Feather will soften the edge of an element. Most of the time when making an element from memorabilia you do not want this but sometimes you may want to blur the edges to match a page or to hide some flaws.

Step 2: Smoothing the Edges

Step 3: Make sure that you have selected the layer with the element. Now just click on the DELETE key to remove anything around your selection.

HINT: When you hit DELETE if the background turns red then you did not ‘Layer from Background’. Undo the DELETE and then right-click on the layer. Chose ‘Layer from Background’ and then click DELETE again.