Unexperienced AdobePhotoshop users have problems with Magnetic lasso tool because they are trying to make very complicated selections. You have to know, this tool have it’s limits. That’s why I recommend you this time to chose some photo with big difference in colors (main part and background). Load that pick in Fotoshop. Chose Magnetic laso tool from palette. Than click anywhere between main caracter on your photo and background. Move the mouse by the line (don’t have to hold mouse button, or click). Photoshop will make several control points on that line. If you make a mistake somewhere, just back cursor to last control point, and than move on further. If you don’t like position of some control point, click BACKSPACE. And on left mouse click, you can put your own control points. When whole circle has made, just click on first controlpoint to close circle, or do left double-click.

Choose Image > Adjustment > Shadow/Highlight to adjust brightness of dark or light areas in an image. If you have an older version of Photoshop that doesn’t include this feature click here.

While you can target shadows or highlights using Curves, the Shadow/Highlight dialog box will often yield superior results. Consider using Curves for overall correction, then fine-tune shadows and highlights with the Shadow/Highlight dialog box. Unfortunately, this feature is not available as an adjustment layer. Enable the Show More Options checkbox to view the complete dialog box.

Shadows/Highlight Sliders

Use the Shadows and Highlights sliders to recover detail in shadows and highlights. The Amount sliders control the strength of the adjustment. Photoshop does the equivalent of a an Auto Contrast adjustment as soon as you enter a non-zero value for Amount for either Shadows or Highlights.

Increasing amounts cause the Shadows slider to increase brightness for in dark areas, and the Highlights slider to decrease brightness in light areas. Tonal Width controls the range of tones that are modified. Use a small value to control deepest shadows or brightest highlights. Increase tonal width to include midtones. To determine whether or not a pixel participates in an adjustment, pixels in the local area are examined. Radius determines the size of this area, and should be approximately 1/2 the size of selected features.

Adjustments Sliders

To compensate for color casts use the Color Correction slider. This slider only has an effect on areas that have been modified with the Shadows/Highlights sliders. Midtone Contrast applies an S-shaped curve to increase or decrease contrast. The clipping points determine what percentage of black/white tones may be truncated. Small values are recommended.

Alternative Techniques

The Shadows/Highlights dialog is the best way to restore shadow/highlight detail. However, if you have an older version of Photoshop that does not have this feature, there are several workarounds.

Curves

To restrict adjustment to shadows or highlights, the following curves are useful.

Improving shadow detail, or shadow compensation, is achieved by increasing brightness in dark areas, leaving light tones untouched. To restore highlight detail, decrease gain in light areas. An extra point or two is required to anchor the straight portion of the curve and ensure that only the desired areas are altered.

Selections

For this technique we will make a selection, then apply Levels or Curves to change brightness levels. For example, to lighten shadows, select dark areas of an image and use a Levels adjustment layer to lighten selected pixels. Selecting dark pixels first effectively forces Levels to target dark pixels only, and any adjustments made will apply only to the darker portion of the image.

The simplest way to make a selection based on pixel density is to use the “Claw” command, so-named because you must shape your hand like a claw to reach all the keys! To execute the Claw command press Ctrl-Alt-~ and light-colored pixels will be selected. To select dark pixels, do the Claw command followed by Ctrl-Shift-I to invert the selection.

For more control when making a selection choose Select > Color Range. In the Color Range dialog box light areas indicate selected pixels and gray areas indicate partially selected pixels. Be sure Invert is unchecked, then click in the shadows to select dark areas, or highlights to select light areas. Adjust the Fuzziness slider to control the range of tonal values selected.

After making a selection, bring up a Levels or Curves adjustment layer to adjust selected pixels. You can always adjust your selection in the Levels/Curves Layer Mask. Alternatively, you can duplicate the layer (Ctrl-J) after selection. This will place the selection on a separate layer. Then apply Levels or Curves to the new layer. The latter technique is not as flexible since it’s difficult to modify the selection at a later time.

The most obvious tools for dodging and burning are the Dodge and Burn tools. Choose Dodge to lighten and Burn to darken. Options include Range and Exposure.

Range. Choose Shadows, Midtones, or Highlights. Dodging and burning will emphasize these tones.

Exposure. Determines the strength of the dodge/burn tools. Default is 50%.

You can retrace to build up dodge/burn effects in a painterly fashion. The default exposure of 50% works well in this regard. Excessive dodging or burning can be undone with Ctrl-Z (undo) or backing up to a previous version in the History palette.

The Dodge and Burn tools change image pixels. This makes it difficult to undo or make changes at a later date. Although you can control range and exposure, the controls are somewhat primitive. You cannot, for example, increase or decrease contrast. The following sections explore alternative methods that work on layers. Not only is the original image left intact, but they afford more control when dodging and burning.

You can use Layer Masks to make selections. When you apply a layer mask to a layer, you are controlling the opacity of the layer. If the layer mask is white, the layer is opaque. If the layer mask is black, the layer is transparent. A gray layer mask allows part of the layer to show through.

Consider the following figure. First double-click on the background layer to convert it to a regular layer. The click on the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the Layers palette to add a Layer Mask. After adding a Layer Mask, click on the Layer Mask in the Layers palette, and paint. If we add a gradient to the layer mask, the top layer becomes transparent in areas where the mask is black, and remains opaque in areas where the mask is white.

Layer Mask and Selections

If you make a selection, then add an adjustment layer, the Layer Mask associated with the adjustment layer is automatically shaded to include the selection. For example, make a selection and add a Curves adjustment layer. The selection is converted to a Layer Mask for the Curves layer, so the Curves adjustments only apply to the selection. After adding the adjustment layer you can fine-tune the selection by painting on the layer mask.

To apply more than one adjustment layer to the same selection, first make a selection and add the first adjustment layer. This creates a layer with the appropriate layer mask designating the selection. Ctrl-click on the layer containing the Layer Mask. The selection is restored in the original image and you can add the second adjustment layer.

If both layers already exist and you want to copy a mask from layer-A to layer-B, first delete the Layer Mask from Layer-B. Then Ctrl-click on Layer-A to restore the selection in the original image, click on Layer-B, and click on the Add Layer Mask button in the Layers palette.

Selection Tools

The Photoshop Help menus provide an excellent description of the selection tools. A short summary follows:

Marquee Tool. The Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee tools select rectangles, squares, ellipses and circles.

Lasso Tool. Just click and drag to outline irregular shapes.

Polygon Lasso Tool. Select any shape with straight edges. Press the Alt key while drawing to switch to the Lasso.

Magnetic Lasso Tool. A good tool to use when tracing distinct boundaries. Press the Alt key while drawing to lay down extra points.

Magic Wand Tool. Select related colors. Increase Tolerance for a wider range of colors, and disable Contiguous if the entire image should participate in the selection.

For all the selection tools, press Shift to add to a selection, and Alt to subtract from a selection, before dragging. To preclude sharp boundaries you’ll want to feather your selection. Before selection specify feathering in the Options bar. After selection choose Select > Feather to increase feathering.

Quick Mask Mode

In Quick Mask mode you can make selections with a brush. Enter and exit Quick Mask mode with shortcut toggle “Q”. In Quick Mask mode areas that are not selected appear to be ruby red, while areas that are selected appear normal. You can also toggle Quick Mask mode using the Quick Mask buttons on the tool bar. Double-click on these buttons and you can specify mask color and behavior.

Press “Q” while viewing an image and nothing happens. That’s because nothing has been selected, so everything appears normal. Exit Quick Mask mode, make a rough selection with the Marquee tool, then enter Quick Mask mode again. After adjusting brush size, softness, and opacity, proceed to paint your selection. Slowly buildup the selection around the edges for proper feathering. When done press “Q” again to view your selection.

Extract

For tricky selections, try the Photoshop Extract command (Filter > Extract).

Knockout

For even trickier selections, try Corel’s Knockout. A Photoshop plug-in, it does a fantastic job selecting complex patterns from plain backgrounds. Hair against a blue sky is a classic example where Knockout excels (unless the hair is blue). For complex backgrounds you’ll need to fine-tune the results.

Brushes

In the coming sections we’ll be using brushes for selections, dodging, and burning. You don’t have to be an artist to use brushes — but a basic understanding is important.

Photoshop ships with a set of predefined brushes. To view parameters for brush presets, choose Window > Brushes to open the Brushes Palette. Click on Brush Tip Shape and select a brush.

Brushes Palette

Diameter controls the size of the brush in pixels. Soft-tipped brushes have zero Hardness, and hard-tipped brushes have Hardness set to 100%. Although you can custom-define your own brushes, the predefined brushes that ship with Photoshop are usually sufficient.

If you’re not going to add a new brush, or change brush parameters, it’s more convenient to use the Brush pop-up palette to select a preset brush.

Brush Pop-up Palette

Click on the palette menu and try different display options ranging from Text Only to Display Thumbnail. For Display Thumbnail, leave your cursor over a brush and tool tips will display the brush’s name.

The hard round and soft round brushes suffice for most editing tasks. In practice you can use shortcut keys instead of the Brush palette or Brush Pop-up palette:

• press [ to decrease diameter
• press ] to increase diameter
• press Shift-[ to decrease hardness
• press Shift-] to increase hardness

I suggest you spend a few minutes and experiment with various brush shortcuts and settings. In Photoshop choose File > New and open a document with a white background. Press “D” for default colors, choose the Brush tool (”B”), select a brush in the Brush pop-up palette, and paint. Experiment with hard and soft brushes and different brush sizes. Press “X” to eXchange colors and paint with white. Press “X” again to swap back to black. Decrease Opacity to 20% in the options bar. Drag to color an area. Click and drag again over the same area. Using this painterly technique you can buildup an area to the desired density.

These few simple techniques will suffice for most purposes in our digital darkroom.

Without a doubt a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer is the easiest way to make tonal adjustments. These controls work just like the adjustments on your television. Let’s examine exactly what Brightness/Contrast adjustments do in terms of Curves.

To duplicate the effect of the Contrast slider in the Curves dialog box, increase in contrast moves the endpoints of the curve as shown below.

These adjustments are similar to adjustments of the input and output sliders in Levels. An increase in contrast will sacrifice detail, and a decrease in contrast will sacrifice tonal range. With Levels, however, you do have a histogram to view pixel distribution and can intelligently select cut-off points. With the Contrast slider you’re operating in the dark.

Increasing and decreasing brightness adds the same value to all pixels. This effectively moves the transfer curve up or down as indicated below.

This also sacrifices detail and tonal range. The gamma slider in Levels, or shifting the midpoint in Curves, yields better results without loss of detail. The following dark image has been lightened using both Levels and the Brightness control.