Can someone tell me how to lighten these up?
 

I've loaded two photos to my website to use as backgrounds. You can see them here

http://www.tincityartglassllc.com/Workshops.html

and here

http://www.tincityartglassllc.com/Be...BeadClass.html.

I'd like to lighten the photos somehow so that they fade into the background almost like they are painted on parchment. But I am clueless as to how. Would someone be so kind to please explain?
I have Photoshop Elements 5 and Picasa but am not really familiar with either one.Thanks.
Paula

Would something like this work?

Set up the photo on a layer above a white layer. Then use the opacity to set up the fade. Look at... Help!! With Pictures Here in the dark room I talk about Opacity a little with the layer Mask explanation.
Scott

Bolisima They are perfect!!! (And beautiful!!) Thanks!!
Scott Thank You. I'll have to read about layers and masking. They are a little beyond me right now!

Paula

Gee thanks Scott, I guess that means I did the "right thing" ! I played with Paula's pictures just to see if I could figure it out. I'm such a beginner with graphics programs, it's kind of nice to have someone confirm my methods. I did what you said but when I put the image on a white background it seemed too washed out, so I used the eye dropper tool to find the color of the background, and used that for the background layer instead.

Good Grief I am totally lost!!

Paula

I could walk you through it in Paint Shop Pro, but I don't know the other progams!

I've been hacking around with Paint Shop Pro or about a year now... I don't find graphics programs easy to learn at all. I think if you actually understood computer graphics and all the lingo, figuring what to do on any program wouldn't be awfull, but when you don't understand the terminology, or have any idea what sequence of steps it might take to accomplish a task, or even what word to search for in the helps...yikes...it's hard! (or I'm daft, who knows!)

Bolimasa, Is so right. If you don't know the terminology. It seems like a mightily mountain to climb. But most tasks in photo editing are pretty simple. As a photographer I picked up photoshop in a few days. But when it comes to word processing I'm still lost. Guess it all depends on the roads you have traveled. But trust in your grey matter, if you want it. It will come.

One thing about the eye dropper's. If you know what they are used for, They are powerful. But if you don't understand their purpose. They will guild you astray. They are meant, to be used with test or control strips.

Now Bolimasa, There was no need to go to the eye dropper. All you needed to do, was try a different setting ( amount ).


Here is one of the images. from the help!! with picture. response. ( if some one can post the link for it that would be great. I 'm a dumb-ass when it comes to that kinda thing. ).



Ok forget about multiply and the layer masks (layer 2 ). This photo was from another tut. We only need to look at two things. First the photo is on one layer and the background layer is white ( Layer 1 & background. layer names ).The second, is the opacity command arrows ( click and hold will revel the sliders ). There you have two options, opacity and fill. Opacity is the main control and fill is how much feather. Feather is more important when blending, not really what were talking about here. Click on layer 1, the layer name will turn blue or will indicate in some way that it is the layer your working on. Now play with both just for grins and giggle. Its all about what looks good to you. Then flatten the image when your happy with it. Sharpen and save.
Scott
P.S. Keyboard short cut F7 will bring up the layers window.
P.S.S The best advice about computers I ever got, was from my bother. He was selling computers when only a few understood. I asked, what the hell. His advice.... Keep throwing mud at the wall. Some of it will stick.

Yeah I played with differnt opacity levels, and just didn't like how they looked, that's why I tried the eye dropper to pick a color to change the background color to.

I don't (in Paint Shop Pro) have "fill" as an option I do have something called "blend mode" that brings up an overwhelming number of choices, most of which I can't guess what they will do! I'll have to play around with that sometime.

It would be great to understand these things well enough to know what you have to do to get what you want, rather that trying all possible combos of things until you get something pleasing!

Regarding that eye dropper tool I have no idea what it does other that I can click on part of an image and load that color into my palette.

I'm definately low on the learning curve, but want to learn!

Thank You both so much!! And Kim V for the email! I sure will have stuff to try this weekend! I don't think I have Paint Shop on this computer. If I do I can't find it. I did use Elements 2.0 for years to crop and do easy stuff but when I opened 5.0 I said "Yikes!"

Paula

FYI - Paint Shop Pro offers a 30 day free trial:

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satelli...=1156169693940

And it you like it is on sale for $80 right now. I think it's a decent alternaltive to photoshop if you want something at relatively decent price.
Or course maybe Elements might do what you need. I get so confused about the Photoshop products... they come in so many "flavors" I have no idea how you ever figure out what you really need!

Thanks Bolimasa!! I do need easy!

Paula

I just posted a note about Paint.NET, a free photo-editing application that I think is really great. It's similar to PhotoShop, but not really hard. Here's a really easy way to lighten an image in Paint.NET (written for a complete novice--please forgive me if some of this is elementary):

1. Click Add New Layer in the Layers palette (bottom right corner of screen). This will create a new layer on top of the original, like this:

http://beadworkstudio.com/Beadwork/l..._img_step1.png

2. Click on the Paint Bucket icon in the Tools palette. That's the icon highlighted with the blue square in the image above.

3. Click anywhere in the image. Only the new layer is filled with white, and your image seems to disappear.

4. Click Layers > Layer Properties in the top menu.

5. Slide the Opacity bar until you're happy with the image, like this:

http://beadworkstudio.com/Beadwork/l..._img_step5.png

Now save your file: File > Save As , then select an image type--I recommend PNG. That's it!

THANKS!!


Paula