When I originally posted the Griffin

http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...=24&ppuser=780

Derek suggested it deserved a plainer background and Lesley wanted me to lose part of the plinth, so having run out of current pics, thought it time to have a go - but blurring the background as if my lens had f2 rather than going for black which might imply a piece of jewellery in its case rather than a huge outdoor monster

An intricate shape to cut out. I went straight to NX, but went back to PSE4 later to make sure I wasn't being unfair. There is too much variation in shade/colour for magic wand selection (layer 1 in PSE 1) and as I used selection brush in NX, tried the PSE one - layer 2. The guess is better than with wand, but missing the front paw altogether in PSE 2 despite having specifically added it (PSE 1). If I had wanted to continue, I think it would have been by using the polygonal lasso to cut it out a bit generously then erode using eraser. However, knowing PSE polygon's flair for jumping the gun and finishing with a bold but totally inapropriate diagonal flourish, I suspect it would have to have been done in bits on several layers then consolidated.

In NX I use the gaussian blur on the whole cropped image, step 4. This is then modified using the selection brush minus and plus in alternation in LINKED step 4a 'colorize' on the same partial selection. All relevant tools open and handy to the mousework. In NX 1 there are still one or two very faint traces of the blue 'marker dye' still on the griffin and there, blurring would still occur. Missing 'blue dye' from the area to be blurred doesn't matter if it is practically black anyway; there one is just wiping out small whitish branches that could remain looking like part of the sculpture.

One can check progress by turning off the 'blue dye' by unticking step 4a at any time. But in NX 2, the colorize step 5 is shown ticked, as I have also shaded down the bits of sky showing through using 40% opacity on a grey pipetted from the trees.

NX 2 also shows steps 6 to 8 unticked which would convert to B & W, decide final crop and deal with the plinth for the pic as posted today. The B & W conversion deals with the filter colour+strength as well as mods to brightness and contrast needed to optimise as a B & W version, but turned off in NX 2 showing the colour version.

http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...500&ppuser=780

Note 11.4MB file encapsulating original 7.4MB NEF and both Modified coloured and B & W versions at full scale (and 9.3 MB temp cache). The equivalent .psd file after consolidating layers as far as possible would be at least 50MB for keeps. Reducing and saving as a forum sized .jpg is a simple further step, which need not be saved.

In case any non Nikononians are looking, everything except the 'base adjustments' are available on .tif or .jpg files. If you have say Pentax K10D or Sony Alpha 100 using the same sensor AND you have set your in-camera preferences correctly and exposed roughly correctly, you may have done extremely little in the camera and RAW steps available only for NEF anyway. There are dozens of ways of adjusting brightness in 'open' NX and I am not sure they are any less potent than the RAW exposure compensation.