Has anyone used the old zoom slide copiers, with a digital camera, I bought one second hand more than 10 years ago, I'm sure I still have it somewhere, and if I can find it this weekend I might give it a go. I remember copying some slides to film, but I can't remember how good the results were. Must give it a try.

The Magic Wand tool selects areas of similar colours, and is probably not what you need. The birds feet and some of the other colours are close to the colour of the paving, that is probably why it is being copied. if you use the tool above the Magic Wand, the Lasso tool, you will find that you copy what you select. There are 3 varieties of Lasso tool, try them all and see what results you get.

It's not a difficult thing to do, but selecting the portion of the foreground picture you want to place on your background can be a little akward and time consuming. The more time you spend getting this right the better the final pic will be. As I said you can either make a careful selection before you copy and paste or tidy up the image once you have pasted it on to the background. You do have a "Magnetic Lasso Tool" for making a selection, but as Mannesty said in a previous post, "The extract tool works best with subjects having a well defined/contrasting edge. Hairy animals are more difficult."
I used this Magnetic Lasso Tool" for cutting out the images of the car above, and if you look closely some of the edges are not quite right and the car aerial is missing, but this was only a quick example to give you an idea of what you could do.

Yes, all the tools you need are in Elements 3. Although I would open the background shot first, process it as required, blur, enhance, turn to b&w or what ever you want to do. Then open your foreground shot, select the portion you want, you dont have to be too accurate at this stage, select 'copy' and then 'paste' it on to your background picture. From here you can resize, move or apply filters and effects to this new 'layer'. Then depending on how accurately you selected your foreground you can trim the image using the eraser tool. Then save in any format you need


Here's an example, there were no cars in the original pic, the image of the car was copied and pasted a few times, resizing as I went.

Yes, I think your right, I'll keep playing with PS Elements and C1 for now and see how things go. I also downloaded a Beta copy of Adobe's new Lightroom, http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/
It's a Mac only Beta, although the full version will be Mac & Windows. I've had a little play with it and was impressed by all the features. I guess I'll have to include this in my investigations!

Rawshooter Essentials appears to be Windows only, I'm running OS X on a Mac. I'll probably need to to take a wider range of pics, ( other than the 'tattie' pics ), try Elements and Capture One, ( before the free trial expires ), and see which one I like best. I had just wondered if anyone 'out-there' had gone through the same process and come up with a preference. One of the problems I had with Elements 3, was that it was processing the RAW pictures without me having any input, I since discovered I had to disable 'Automatic ' in some of the options, so each time I use it I learn a little bit more. I must admit Capture One felt more 'Apple-like', very intutive and easy to use. I think I'll keep taking the pictures for now and as long as I save the RAW files, I can compare different software as I find it. I would like to try Apple's 'Aperture' but so far I don't think it's very Pentax friendly

I tried two new things this weekend, shooting in RAW and Macro, both seem to have a steep learning curve. I've had a *ist DS since just before Xmas, and have spent a lot time getting used to it, using the jpeg mode. Being an avid watcher of these forums, I thought I would try using the RAW option that a lot of people appear to use. I dug out some of the old M42 macro gear I have, fixed it to the DS and started looking around for a subject. Gave up after an hour or so, nothing seemed suitable. Went off to clean out some kitchen cupboards, and 'BINGO', found the subject matter at last.






I then went to process the picutre with Elements 3 on the Mac, but found it difficult to use. I downloaded a trial copy of Capture One and found it a lot easier to use, I've since revisited Elements 3 and feel a little happier using it. My question is, should I stick with Elements 3, ( I have the latest RAW plug-in), or pay out more money for Capture One, and would I notice the difference. You can see a pic of the equipment I used and the full subject matter here,
http://web.mac.com/john_md/iWeb/ click on Photos 6

I went to my favourite "photo" place this weekend, took about 200 pics, ( how I love digital ), but do you think I need to go back and saw off the obvious offending branch, and re-take the pic ? *ist DS- 1/4 sec @ f27 on a 28-80 zoom from my old Z-1, ( Sorry not entirely sure how to get the pic into the forum window, but you can download it here ... http://homepage.mac.com/john_md/FileSharing22.html )
They say every picture tells a story, well I took some of a loch at my "photo" place, and it was so dead calm that I decided to throw a rock into the water and take a pic or two, to show that the mirror effect was not "photo-shopped", to my horror a fisherman , about 100 yards away went ballistic, started swearing and shouted something about a shotgun, I was very glad he was on the far side of the loch. I'll post a link to these pics at a later date.[/img]

Corrected now George, spelling not my strongest point. I'll be back along the Fort William - Mallaig road in a week or two, firstly off to Orkney on the 20th Feb, then Inverness and Isle of Skye, the DS will be getting a work out over the next month. Must get an extra set of rechargeables.

My first post,
Don, I see you you use a Mac. I'm a Mac fan too, and I've just regained the 'photo bug' after a few years of also visiting the planet "DIVORCE". I treated myself to a *ist DS just after Xmas and have been clicking like mad. I loved my old 'Spot' and even toyed with a Z1, ( it didn't get the use it deserved ), but the DS is fantastic ! I'm learning new stuff everyday, especially from reading all the excellent posts on these forums. I've cheated a little and used Apple's new iWeb application to get some pics on the web, the results seem ok, even if my pictures are not to professional standards. The point is I enjoy taking the pictures and I even enjoy the post processing on the computer. The biggest test the DS has had so far, was when I went to Shetland this year for a weeks work. The Up-Helly-A' festival was on at the same time. I got a good position at the "galley" to be burned, ( missed lots of other good shots, but there was so many people, to move from my position would have caused me to miss the burning of the "galley" ). I took about 200 photos using a mixture of all the settings on the camera, the best ones coming from Av and Night Scene. I'm still using the jpeg mode as yet, I want to get familiar and comfortable with what the camera can do, before I seriously try the RAW format. Anyway, keep giving away the good advice, and you can see the Up-Helly-A' pics here,
http://web.mac.com/john_md/iWeb