Content
  1. Layer
  2. Stencil
  3. Magic wand
  4. Flood fill
In this lesson you will learn to improve the background of a picture. You need a good feeling for the magicwand to stencil determined areas of the picture. This lesson needs about 20-40 min., depends on how talent you are...

1. Stencil

Please load the picture to the left into ArtEffect. Open then the Layer (function key F6 or menu WINDOW). Create a new layer with the button NEW and call it Sky. Activate the layer background. Now open the menu STENCIL and choose "show stencil" and after this mask all. Now you should see the stencil- color cover your picture. If not, repeat the masking steps.

2. Magic wand

Doublelick on the Magic wand and change the slider All in the tool settings to 65. To remove parts of picture-stencil hold the left ALT key. Now you must remove the beach, water, the stones and the trees from the stencil. You can also try the Color selection from the menu STENCIL. Take the Add color tool and click into the beach-area of your picture. Then use the TOLERANCE slider to unmask the "frontparts" of the picture. Or you can use the Rectangular-masking-tool to unmask most parts of the picture. If you have done it, you must inverse the stencil. You will find the function in the STENCIL menu.

3. Flood fill

Activate the layer Sky. Click now on the Flood fill tool and change the cycle-gadget to Graduate. Open now the Color-Manager and change the color of the first row in the RGB-mode. The first color should be "dark blue" the last "turquoise". Click on the RANGE button, then on "dark blue", hold down the mousebutton and drag the pointer to "turquiose". ArtEffect use now this range of color for Graduate. The Opacity should be 100%. Now click into your picture and wait until is filled with the Flood fill color. Then click on the top of your pictures sky, hold down the mousebutton and drag the pointer to the bottom of the picture. A line is following your pointer. Make sure that it will be nearly vertically. Release the mousebutton. You can see now, how the Graduate is done in your picture.
Switch to the layer and change the Opacity for Sky to 80%. Now copy per drag & drop the Background onto the Sky. Your work is done.

Maybe you have to smooth the edge between sky and beach, so feel free to do it. You have improved your "holiday picture".... ;^)