selecting leaves ??

[ianrb]

best or better way to select the leaves and mask out concrete steps? -- not sure where it will be going after that (??) Thinking I need more leaves (??)

Links ??
Thanks for looking in -- 2nd pic is why the brain is not working atm -- expecting 46c wed; 45c  thurs 45c; fri a cool 39!  Record here is 46.9c or 116f !!

[firstdefence]

There is too much variation in the leaves to get a job lot selection.

Use the selection wand first select as much as possible with contiguous off, then its a manual job, zoom in and use the selection brush with a small size, put on some music and click away using the alt key to subtract. 

Tip: single clicks when using the selection brush will get better selection than trying to brush a selection in, this is good for detail selection and removing bits within the selection such as dark spots.

Saying: Inch by inch life's selections are a cinch, yard by yard life selection is hard. 

[John Rostron]

It struck me that a faster initial approach would be to remove the steps, just using the flood select and delete, then a judicious use of the erase brush. I took about ten minutes to produce this.

Still some way to go, but it is an approach.

John

[firstdefence]

It's a tough one, either way its manual selection and a few patient hours work, oh and save selection often, either to a spare channel or to file. You think this was a simple select by colour job but no such luck there is too much colour variation and tonal width to get an easy selection.

It doesn't help that the image we are playing with is low quality so a raw file might yield a better workflow for selection.

[firstdefence]

Just had another go at this and using the magic wand with contiguous off, add selected as the option and small percentages trying to fill the selection gaps within the leaves got a better result, not perfect but much closer to full selection, I also refined the selection and nudged the ramp to the positive a small amount. I'd say this is about 90-95% of the way there, so manually tweaking it would be a fairly simple job.

leaf selection.afphoto Saved with history so you can jog back and forth in the history panel.