More Photoshop madness

I can't seem to walk past my computer at the moment without sitting down to do battle with Photoshop. It's me against the software!

Photoshop may be winning the war, but I think I have won the latest battle....teaching myself how to create silhouettes.

The image above started out like this... (one of my favourite photos by the way, taken a few years ago)

Using the "quick selection tool" (which, confusingly, looks like a paint brush) I selected the part of the photo with the figure jumping.

Next, I clicked "edit", and then "fill", and filled the selected part of the photo with white. 

I then clicked "select" and "inverse" which then highlighted the remainder of the photo, and again, filled it, this time with yellow.

Next I used the quick selection tool to highlight the white image and copy and paste it. To move them around I had to click on each "layer" (this is the part that I really don't understand about Photoshop - what are these layers you speak of?) and click the moving tool to move the images around.

And, sadly, these few simple steps took hours! Oh dear. But I'm happy with the result, and may play around with it to make it suitable for uploading to Spoonflower (to make some fabric). It may also make a cool artwork to put in a frame.

Once I'd got the hang of it I played around with some more images. 

This photo of the very clever Minky G and the Effects....

became this....

...kinda like it!

At some point it occurred to me that there must be a "Photoshop for Dummies" book out there somewhere. If I'm ever going to win this war, I'd better get my hands on a copy.

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