another photo to look at.....please

[Dan]

i know a white ball against white clouds isn't great. is there a way to edit out the clouds so the sky would be blue?

http://i640.photobucket.com/albums/uu123/DAN_C_01/100b1000.jpg

[coffee]

Sure there are ways. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? Is it that you want the ball to pop more? I did a little work on it in PS and removing the clouds doesn't accomplish this. In fact it make the photo very uninteresting without the clouds.

If making the ball pop more is what you want, I would select the ball, inverse the selection to select everything but the ball, then clone some of the blue sky behind the ball. After that, inverse again to select the ball and adjust the levels to brighten the ball against the blue sky. There are other ways of lightening up the ball, this is just one way. Hope this helps

[coffee]

Here is a fast edit that brings out the ball more. It's not perfect obviously as the edges are not refined enough, it needs more time in it, but it should give you an idea.

[coffee]

Here's a little better example. It's still not where it needs to be to look believable, but it's it's better than the first.

In this one I moved some of the blue sky behind the ball, and lightened the ball. With more time it would look much better. I'm still new at PS so I don't know all the good techniques yet.

[Dan]

bad thing is - i don't have PS. I don't have a good editng software.

[coffee]

There are lots of free editing programs out there that can do similar things that PS does. I think the most popular is Picasa 3.0. Here ya go:
http://picasa.google.com/

[laura]

Yeah, Picasa is good. You can also get free 30-day trials of PS and Elements, on Adobe site.