Preserved Topic: working with scanned pictures

i just picked up a scanner to play with. I grabbed one of my old high school art pictures, and scanned it to photoshop. It basically sanned perfect, but i am having trouble selecting things to play around with them. Its basically a simple still life of nuts and bolts with some shading. How would i single out a bolt and get it in a channel? I would love to post screenies but of course i dont know how, im getting there...

lasso tool
polygonal lasso
magnetic lasso tool
marquee tool
colour range tool
magic wand tool
pen tool
freeform pen tool
magnetic pen tool
quick mask

take your pick

i love the options, but how do u get them so exact like the edited photos and stuff? the magnetic lasso tool? i guess ill have to play around some more before i post questions. thanks for the push Soc-X

it really all depends on what your trying to select.. each tool has its own use, and the only way to find out which one is best suited is to learn them all hours of practice are ahead of you grasshopper - enjoy and learn -

When I want to be percise I use the poly-lasso zoomed in very, very, very tight. I just move along the edge with the spacebar and work the whole thing, I ususally build a channel for the selection. Just zoom in about 400% or more and start selecting. When I want to be lazy I use the wand and quick mask. For complex images I use a combination of allmost all of them, I use the wand and select>similar a lot with images that art the same color. I find channels the most valuable with complex selections because you can see your selection in black and white. Good luck.

Question for ya. Is it a line drawing, painting, or photo? I've scanned a few line drawings in before and as long as the lines are fairly bold you can adjust the threshold to bring out the lines. You will lose some shading but that is easily replaceable in PS. Then use Select>Color Range with a fuzziness of 200 and select the black. Copy the selection to a new layer and WHAM! Edit as you please. Painting or photos i have not much experience in, my guess would be the pen or lasso tools.

-Wil

It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

[This message has been edited by wilmonkey (edited 07-30-2001).]

Hmmm, i was re-reading over the post maybe this was not what you were looking for. Well I hope is helps someone.

[This message has been edited by wilmonkey (edited 07-30-2001).]

some of the lines are bold, some are light, main problem is the blue paper But it is a drawing, using lead and white pencile, light blue paper. But the select/color range tool will have tons of uses else where, thanks for the post wilmonkey.

If I scan in B&W, I sometimes use Levels to clean it up. But most of the time I use Curves for some cool Scan-O-Magic.