Damien Symonds

Have you pressed D to make sure your swatches are pure black and pure white?

Well, the first step is to choose the new background. What do you intend to put there?

Yesssss ....

No, that's correct. Now, when you're ready to paint it on, choose your orange colour in the toolbar first, then voila!

Yep!

How did you go?

Great. So now, with that file, add a Hue/Saturation layer and move the Saturation slider all the way to the left. Then add a Levels layer and move the white slider to about 170. Then add an "Invert" adjustment layer. Then flatten the layers. Then you'll be able to create the brush.

Ok, in that case, make a new file with a completely black background, and put the overlay on it, and show me that.

Can you show me what the overlay looks like? A link to where you bought it from would be best.

I'm so sorry, as far as I'm aware, there's no way to save crop presets in Elements.

Yeah, you'll easily get a Dell Ultrasharp in that price range.

Have you read this? The links are out of date, but the essence of the info is still good.

Did you play with it?

Whoa, whoa! Never cut! http://www.damiensymonds.net/2010/09/extract-then-copy-vs-copy-then-extract.html Regarding curving, search on YouTube for tutorials about Puppet Warp.

It's excellent!!!! Just soften the shadow behind his heels, and you're done.

LR's noise removal sliders are exactly the same as ACR's.

Right. With this. Yes, that is a risk. You can try changing the blend mode of the Levels layer to Luminosity.

You'd just use the white eyedropper for the little girl's hair, like this and this. The boy's hair will be a little more complicated, but should also work with the eyedropper.

Gosh no, this won't be a problem at all!

Oh gosh Erin, I'm so sorry to hear that. My own uncle also passed away earlier this week. I need you to do this check. If it passes that, show me a 100% crop to check the focus and quality.

In essence, the method is putting a black-and-white layer over the photo, on a blend mode. I've used Channel Mixer for the BW, but there are other BW layers that might work too. I have used Soft Light mode, but I hope you saw this thread in your searching, where I used Hard Light mode instead.

Just to clarify, the issue is Point #5 here: I can't help you with the raw processing part here, I'm afraid. You have to do that by yourself, then I'll help you with the face.

First PSD Second PSD

Give me a minute, I'll upload the PSD files ...

Gosh yes, you sure will.