I just bought it today and got home, I can't figure anything out except what I could already do with iphoto. I have been trying for 5 hours to isolate my daughter out of the middle of the picture so I can do something with the background, I hadn't put up the back drop yet and there is the carpet, the chair and her boppy pillow. Even after I put up the back drop that was still the best picture. At one point I found something that isolated most of her but for some reason it didn't get her neck, part of her head and the embroidered butterfly on her dress. But it got everything else perfect even her fingers and toes. Then I tried to just trace the outside and I did that too but it was horrible shakey and nothing like I see in the gallery where people just have images floating on the pages. I have read the instructions a million times and just can't get it. HELP ME!

Couple of options to try. Magic Selection brush- will be near the magic wand tool or the Magic Extractor tool by going to the menu bar-Image> magic extractor. This might work best for what you are trying to do. You basically scribble on the color ranges and textures you want with the "add to selection tool" and then scribble on the background with the "remove from selection tool". Click on "preview" and you can do additional touchups. Once it looks good hit the OK button. This will all make more sense once you get into the Magic Extractor- it's pretty slick. Also "Feathering" your selection helps ease some of the harsh lines.

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I did the magic extractor and it cut her feet, hands and lower part of her body great even her ears but the her hair was partially missing part of her neck. I don't know if I'm just not doing it right or what at first I did the little red dots on the her and blue dots on the back ground and I got that result so then I traces her body with red and put scribbles all over her and still got the same effect. This sucks.

Hmmm- Thought this might help but alot depends on the complexity of the photo and amount of similarity between colors in the object you want and those in the background. You can use a variety of sleelction tools in the selection process. Would look at what you think would be easiest to get rid of--sound like the background. Use the Lasso tool (point to point mode) to just do a quick outline to elliminate most of the background. Then switch to magic wand- you can adjust the tolerance to fine tune the selection and also may want to check the contiguous option---but if she has brown hair against a brown carpet- this may not work. Sometimes the magic wand leaves little bits unselected that are kind of tedious to go and click on each spot. This is when you would choose the selection brush (make sure it is set to add to selection and make sure your magic wand slection is still active) and use it to add in the unselected by brushing over them. As long as you keep your slection active - you could use all the different selection tools to make your selction.
But to escape briefly from the frustration---since you can already do the extraction process in iphoto- do it in there- save the file and then bring it into PSE? I don't use a Mac but I think primarily the only differences in PSE for Mac or windows is the keyboard shortcuts- everything esle should work the same. If iphoto won't save in a PNG format you could easily erase the wihte background in PSE (feather the slection by 1 or 2 pixels) that will be present when saved as a JPG. PSE is really a pretty powerful program for the price- hope you won't give up on it too soon. Could you post the photo in your gallery? That might help if we can see exactly what you are trying to do.

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I finally got it to work the edges look a little hairy, I was just expecting it to be a quick process, but it took more like 2 hours. I finally figured out how to bring my new back ground in but can't figure out how to change it over to a format
i can order from mpix. I thought this big expensive program would be great but I really just like my iphoto and iscrapbook. I'm sad I spent my Christmas money on it, well the clone stamp is cool.

What format do you need for ordering from mpix? There are many different formats to choose from that should work. Choose File>Save As--the save dialog box will open. By default the format is PSD but there is a drop down list with several other formats. Also if size and resolution are factors you can change that:
Duplicate your original PSD file by Right clicking on the title bar and choose Duplicate
Then right click on the title bar of that document and choose Image size- you will have options to change the dimension and resolution to meet the criteria needed
Then Save As and choose your format.
So sorry you are disappointed- it is a bit challenging to learn at first because of all the features. Try some of the tutorials or even play with the filters and layer blend modes- you really can do some awesome stuff. Plus there are alot of free plugins, brushes, preset shapes,patterns, layer styles etc out there on the internet to increase it's potential. Feel free to PM me with any questions or post here for others to give their advice. It took me a while to get comfortable with the program and haven't yet reached it's full potential.
Rochelle

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