Photoshop question.

[Joe Copalman]

I'm typically not one to do much outside-the-box editing in photoshop, but after a few frustratingly cloudy days of shooting (gray airplanes/gray sky crap), I've wanted to try editing in a way that selectively contrasts the subject from the background.  I finally tried it today with a shot of a Hornet departing Willie and wanted to get some input on the results.  

I used the Quick Selection tool to select the aircraft, used "refine edge" to expand it slightly, inverted the selection, and used levels to jack up the darks on the background and then inverted again to increased the bright tones on the aircraft with levels.  For sh*ts and g*ggles, I screwed with saturation and hue a bit as well and wasn't totally ashamed of the results.

Looks like I pushed just beyond the bounds of believable lighting.  Moving forward, if I do this again, I'd be much more subtle with it.  That said, any constructive input/feedback would be appreciated.  Thanks.

[Jay Beckman]

Only nit I see Joe is you need to apply your tweak inside the canopy as well...

[Joe Copalman]

Yeah, I actually tried that, but my Selection-Fu was not up to the challenge.  Even if I reduced the brush size to 5 pixels, it always came out looking jagged, and even if that wasn't the case, the reflections on the canopy glass were noticeably different in the areas where the sky was visible through the canopy vs. those where a dude or a seat was blocking the sky.  At least doing it this way, the canopy reflections remained uniform.  Like I said, if I ever did an edit like for real, I'd be much more subtle with it, so hopefully the canopy issue would be much less noticeable. 

Any advice on how to more effectively use the selection tool?

Thanks for the feedback.  Always appreciated.

[Jay Beckman]

You've got some other options for making selections:
- Pen Tool (slow and methodical but ultimately the finest control)
- Color Range (works best when you've got fairly clear blue skies)
- Quick Mask (paint in the area on which you want to work. White Adds .. Black Subtracts just like a mask)
- Wands (Magic Wand or SHFT + W brings up the Selection Brush)
- Layers and Masks (make two versions where one is correct for the aircraft and the other is correct for the sky.  Place them on layers (plane over sky) and drop a mask over the entire top layer.  "Erase" the areas of the mask you want to show through (in this case the sky.)  As mentioned above, when working with masks, Darker than 50% brightness reveals and Brighter than 50% covers up.  By varying your brightness, you can vary the mask opacity and make allowances for transparent things like canopies or windows that might not pass the light at 100% intensity.)

[CJPalmer]

Something else to try is to feather the selection. It might help with the jaggies.