Does this work?

[MN Shutterbug]

The white house in the bg of my squirrel pictures, kind of bother me. I've got to get out in the wilderness. I played with them and attempted to make the bg appear as sky. Does it work? If it doesn't, please give me suggestions.

[Steve Foss]

XT, I think these are really close. The telltale (particularly in the second image) is the fuzzy-looking edge transitions between sky and bark on the tree. The serrations also look too uniform and regular to be natural.

Assuming you're using a cloning brush, at that point I zoom in closely on the image and use one of the smaller brush diameters to deliver a more lifelike bark edge.

[MN Shutterbug]

Actually, I went the simple way and used the paint bucket.

But, I just looked out the door and realized that it is sky in the bg, not a house. I looked at the original, and lo and behold, it's light blue in the bg. I must have lost it in PP. I'm going back to the original and rework it.

[Steve Foss]

Ain't PP just sooooo much fun?

[MN Shutterbug]

Unfortunately, I was looking at the wrong picture. In these 2, the sky has gone to white in the originals. The shots were actually just a tad on the dark side to begin with, so where did my blue sky go? It was probably a real light blue to begin with, but still....

[Dbl]

How about some selective blurring in the background?

[MN Shutterbug]

I took the original file, which didn't have any blue but did have some detail in the branches, and instead of manipulating the levels, I adjusted the lightness and saturation of the yellow, to get my squirrel to look the way I wanted.

[Steve Foss]

Looks nice, XT, though a bit flat and dark on my monitor.

You can add contrast without blowing out the whites by going into levels and dragging the mid-range slider well over to the left, which will make the image look washed out, but then you take the shadow slider and pull it to the right, which also brings the mid-range back somewhat as you go. This is my preferred quick way to get contrast in a flat image without any impact on highlights.

[MN Shutterbug]

Yep, Steve. You're correct in your observations. However, your Photoshop levels must work different than my Elements levels. I just couldn't get it to behave decently. Instead, I opened Paint Shop Pro X and played with the curves. Unless I want to spend the next 2 weeks screwing around with this squirrel, I think this is as good as I'm going to get it. IMO, it's definitely an improvement over my first one.

[NiceCarvings]

Wow, thats hardcore beautiful right there. Nice work!