Ok, we're ready to get rid of that still water. Before we go any further, it's a great idea to save this image. Believe me, there will be many mistakes during this step. Eventually this image will be saved as a 256 color gif, but for now save it as a psp or jpg file. That way, we still have our 16 million color depth requirement for editing. Look at the screenshot below and find the "lasso" tool on the toolbar. It looks just like a lasso.

Got the lasso selected and the control palette in view? In the control palette, choose "freehand" under selection type, "0" for feather, and leave the two boxes unchecked. Slide your mouse into the image, pick a point somewhere near the edge of the "water" and left click. While holding the left button, trace around the area you want to cut out until you finish a loop. Don't worry about getting to close to the edge because we can touch up the area later. Once you have your area selected, cut out the area by "control" + "X" or "Edit," then "cut." It should look similiar to the screenshot below. Experiment and play around with this. You can easily undo your last step by going to "Edit" then "undo." You can even undo several edits by choosing "undo history" from the edit menu.

Is the color you left behind the same as what is left in the top portion? If you inadvertly changed colors, you can correct it so both colors are the same. First, you have to undo what you just did to get your water back. Go to "Edit", "undo" or "undo history" if you have to undo more than one step. Once that is done, look for the "eyedropper" on the tool bar. It is two icons to the right of the lasso tool. Select the eyedropper and slide your mouse across the image without clicking. Look at the box that is below the two boxes in the color palette and note the color changing as you slide the mouse. Pick any color and left click. That now makes that color the activated foreground color. Notice that color is now in the top of the two color palette boxes. Right click the mouse and the bottom box changes, making that the activated background color. In our case we want the color that is left over in the top of our image to be both the background and foreground colors. So place the eyedropper there and left click and then right click. Go back to the lasso and redo the loop.

Ok... Save your image and let's move on to STEP 3 to do some retouching.



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