use Photoshop mostly for editing pictures. Something has happened recently, when I want to cut a picture. I only have a square with handles on the 4 corners. I cannot drag the sides out as there is no handles, so I cannot make a selection of the middle section of a picture( take away the top and some of the bottom) Can anybody help?

RE:

Joe, move the cursor along the side-line close to the middle of the line. At one point it will change into a left-right arrow. Now you can move the selection side-ways. The same should be on the top or bottom lines. At the middle of the line the cursor will change into an up.down arrow. Try it out.

Something else may have happened: You've clicked the button 'Front image' (see the top toolbar) which means that the cutting tool is locked to the side-ratio of the original image. There's another button 'Clear' at the right of the 'Front image'-button. Click the one and everything will come back to normal!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

photo editor software

I would like to ask any one who has some experience with dodge and burn efforts in photoshop to share their knowledge or tips. If there are any web tutorials, a link would be great.

Edited to remove the B&W conversion question - I completely missed the sticky above. Doh!!

re:

Dodge and burn are pretty stright forward and depending on what you are trying to dodge and burn depends on what your settings should be so it's a pretty general question to try and give a pecific answer. You will basically use dodge to lighten and area and burn to darken an area. All other settings are to adjust the rate at which it happens and the areas of shadows, midtones, or highlights. Typically when I work on a portrait I use midtone setting for both and the typical amount I am set to is around 5 or 6 percent.

------------

Pixopedia 24 - 1.0.5

A new approach to image editing and painting, animation and video editing. Perform any action through brush movement. Realtime 3D brushing and instant shadowing. New warping methods, facial deformations. Autobrush technique with contour tracking.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I use paintshop pro 7 photo editor simply because its affordable.

As i dont know anything about photoshop has it got may advantages over paintshop?

re:

I've used paintshop pro version 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9. I used to swear by it. I loved it and made nice prints with it.

Then, 2 months ago, I downloaded a full trial version of photoshop CS. The prints I got BLEW ME AWAY. WHile PSP does many of the same things PS CS does, PS CS does them a lot better.

If you have a camera that shoots 12-bit image files (like a Dig Rebel, D70, 10D, etc.) and/or RAW format files, there are HUGE advantages with going with PS CS. At about $600 it's not cheap. And there is A LOT to learn before you will see the benefits. If you get it, also get 2 books: Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS (by Bruce Fraser) and Adobe Photoshop CS for Photographers (Martin Evening).