With your help and some experimentation over the last few days I've learned some important things about selection.  I think it is somewhat misleading and unfortunate that Select Sky places the marching ants marker around what appears to be the sky, when in fact it has selected additional pixels outside the marker and in some cases has only partially selected pixels inside the marker.  When I use the Select Color Range tool the selection indicates areas in which a partial selection is present.  Whether or not it always does this is now something I will check.  When partial selection occurs it is nice to see that indicated.   It serves to provide a reminder to verify that it selected what I wanted. Thanks for the time you've spent helping me.  Do you know of any good tutorials, either written or video, that goes into this level of detail? ... View more

Thank you for your reply.  Here’s the image in Photoshop 26.1.0  (Beta) after I’ve applied some simple contrast, highlights, and shadows adjustments with Camera Raw to Layer 0 configured as a Smart Object.     What I then wanted to do was enhance the contrast in the sky to make it look more dramatic.  I then was use Photoshop to Select > Sky in the hopes it would be quicker than trying to use another tool to get close to what I wanted to select for a mask on a Brightness/Contrast or Curves layer.     I assumed that the “marching ants” defined the area that Photoshop considered to be the sky and that everything within the "marching ants" was fully selected.  More on this later.  There are a couple problems with the selection.  I realize that this image presents some challenges for an automated tool because there is little differentiation in color or brightness between the pre-sunrise sky and low hanging clouds, fog, and even a couple mountain tops.  In the middle of the image there is a small portion of the sky that was not selected automatically.  I assume it was because of the presence of fog and mist.  I wanted to add that missing area to the selection.  There were also section of the clouds and mountain tops that were selected when I didn’t want them selected.  Later on I will delete those areas from the selection, but that is not part of the issues I’m trying to understand and resolve.  In the following image I’ve zoomed in and used the Polygon Lasso Tool to add to the selection between the two mountain peaks to add some sky that was missed.     The selection above has the “marching ants” where I expected them to be in this part of the image.  In the following image I’ve applied the mask to a Brightness/Contrast layer and for illustrative purposes decreased the brightness substantially.  The area that I added with the Polygon Lasso Tool stands out as being much darker although in the original image the brightness is a gradual, smooth gradient from one area to another.     Now doing the Alt + Click on the layer mask shows this:     I learned something here.  It would be a good idea to do the "Alt + Click" on a fairly routine basis just to make sure that what is actually selected for the mask is what I intended.  The area I added to the mask clearly stands out.  It is white while the selected sky is a light gray.  The added selection looks like a setting sun in the middle of the image above.  The next thing I notice is that there are areas outside the “marching ants” boundary of the mask that are selected (they are not totally black), likely partially selected because they are low clouds and of the same color and brightness as some of the "sky", but they are in front of the mountain peaks.   I’m no expert but, it looks like the Select > Sky operation did not fully select all pixels in the main part of the sky.  It seems to have been fooled by the variation in gray tones. To the contrary, the Polygon Selection Tool seems to have fully selected all pixel within its selection boundary and added them to the existing selection.  When the Brightness/Contrast layer was adjusted it had greater effect on the portion of the mask created by adding to the original Sky selection.  I’ve often used the sky selection tool to apply adjustment layers to the sky, but that was mostly done with blue skies and possibly some white clouds with nothing in common with the non-sky portion of the image.  This image is different from others where I’ve had good success with Select > Sky.  I've done a little bit of web searching to see if there are any identified limitations of Select>Sky but so far I have not found any posts.   Thanks in advance for any further insight you might be able to provide. ... View more

Thank you very much for providing the additional explanation.  The table does a nice job of summarizing the difference among the various options for opening an image.  While linked files is probably very useful to some, it is not a feature that I currently have a need to use and add more complexity to what I'm already doing.  Thanks again for riding out this sequence of posts while I figure out what's going on and how to best use the features available.  I've learned a couple good techniques along the way.        Bill ... View more

I did find a video tutorial that game me an additional clue.  If I open the file from ACR using Open as Object, the image is placed in the inital Photoshop layer position (bottom of the stack) while retaining the raw data in a format editable by ACR.  If I double click on the layer thumbnail I do get ACR invoked with which I can make further edits or change previous edits within the Photoshop environment.  I guess that now gives the nod to Opening as Object as a preferred way to adapt my work flow.  Thanks to all of you who have helped me find my way through this jungle.       Bill ... View more

Thanks for hanging in there as I try to figure this out.  So I invoked Adobe Bridge, then double clicked on a raw (.NEF) file thumbnail which opened the file in ACR.  If I go to ACR's Open button there are three options:  Open, Open as Object, and Open as Copy.  So what I think you're telling me is that if I select Open as Object, the raw file will be preserved and become part of the psd file when I save it.  But so far I haven't seen a way to take advantage of having the raw file preserved there.  Any way, Photoshop has to convert the raw file to its internal working file format so that other Photoshop operations can be performed on the image.  If I just select Open, the raw file will be "rasterized," converting it to an internal format that Photoshop will work with..  When it is saved as a psd file it will not contain the original raw file, just Photoshops interpretation of it.  Do I finally understand?    Since I always keep my raw files in an unmodified state, I don't see the advantage of using ACR's Open as Object option.  I think using ACR's Open and then making Layer 0 a smart object inside of Photoshop does what I need.  When I tried using Open as Object it appears that there are two minor benefits (1) it saved me one step by not having to apply a Convert to Smart Object operation to Layer 0, and (2) the file name appears as the Layer 0 label.  With the Open as Object approach I still do not see all the editing features available in ACR, just the ones provided by the Camera Raw Filter.  So from an editing standpoint what was gained by using Open as Object? ... View more

I did Google "placing your raw file as a Smart Object" and found something that I had not previously known about.  Can you explain how this is different from what I do.  I start in Adobe Bridge, select a photo and tell Bridge to "open" it.  Since I'm working with a raw file (.NEF) ACR is invoked.  I make no changes in ACR and select the Open button.  That brings up the image in Photoshop placing it on Layer 0.  It also shows a nice rendering of the image in the window.  At that point I make Layer 0 a Smart Object. When I tried having Photoshop do Open as a Smart Object this first thing that happen after I selected the file was having ACR opened with the image visible in the window.  Pressing OK in ACR invoked Photoshop with the file opened and present as the only layer with the file name showing on the layer.  It was a smart object.  I don't see any difference in the final state of the two different approaches.  Am I missing something? ... View more

Absolutely and I do that from time to time.  I think the bottom line is that the name applied to the Photoshop Camera Raw Filter is a bit of a misleading name that suggests it's the same thing as ACR when it is not.  It fooled me for a long time until I needed to get into some of the less used features of ACR and found out they weren't in the Camera Raw Filter.  Now I know and can be careful when and where I use each tool. ... View more

That's true for almost everything.  :} ... View more

I willing admit that I'm not a Photoshop expert.  That's why I made the post -- to figure out how these systems work and why features/applications that have about the same name seem to have different capabilities.  I need to understand certain detail in order to make good decision regarding which features to use and when to use them.  Making the post shorter might have created more ambiguity.  In the end I think you confirmed my suspicions that ACR and the Camera Raw Filter in Photoshop are not the same thing, even though their interfaces seem very similar.   Clarification:  "changes made in ACR before opening the image in Photoshop have been made destructively"  Granted, it isn't possible to open a camera raw (.NEF) file directly in Photoshop.  The first thing that happens when a photo is "opened" in Photoshop is that ACR is invoked to convert the file to the format Photoshop needs as its internal working format.  If during the initial invocation of ACR I decide to use some of its features to change the brightness or contrast or use the Radial Gradient tool to adjust a specific area, once I click Open in ACR those changes are "permanent" as far as Photoshop is concerned.  I do not have the ability from within Photoshop to undo individual members of those modifications.  If at some point I don't like the way those changes came out, I have to go back to the raw file and start over.  The changes made with ACR prior to invoking Photoshop are destructive from the perspective of what Photoshop gets to work on.  The original raw file is not changed since the information about the edits I may have made are stored in a sidecar file that I can use in the future, modify, or delete if I choose.  As far as I can tell the specific details about any changes made in ACR are not passed on to Photoshop in a way that would allow me (Photoshop) to change them.  If I wanted to change the image brightness once I'm in Photoshop I will have to add a Brightness/Contrast or Curves layer.  If I had mistakenly burned out some detail in the image, there's no way for Photoshop to get it back.  That's why I chose to call ACR a destructive editing process in the context of using it as a precursor to Photoshop's invocation.   "Using the ACR filter in Photoshop, however, is destructive. Then it works just like any other filter. So it seems you got this backwards." There are two ways to use the Camera Raw Filter in Photoshop.  Yes, one would be destructive, the other not.  Let's say that I just opened a raw file in Photoshop and when ACR was invoked I made no changes.  The image will appear in Photoshop as Layer 0.  If at that point I immediately use the Camera Raw Filter on Layer 0 then any changes that I make are permanent and cannot be undone.  Thus they are destructive and present in the psd file. The original raw file is preserved.   However, if I make Layer 0 a Smart Object and then use the Camera Raw Filter, the changes I make with the Camera Raw Filter are saved as a modification to Layer 0.  At any time I can go back and change those modifications.  So using the Camera Raw Filter this way is non-destructive.  The Camera Raw Filter parameters are saved in the psd file. I have a personal preferance for using ACR to do my initial coarse adjustment of an image rather than creating a larger layer stack to do the same thing, primarily because ACR has a much more user friendly interface and I can make a lot of significant changes in a very short period of time.  My process is to do that with Layer 0 set as a Smart Object before I start doing other things to the image.   "Lens profiles in ACR are intended for raw files and are not available for jpegs. If there is a lens profile for use on RGB files inside Photoshop, it will be a different profile, and there are much fewer of those."  About the only time I edit a jpg file in Photoshop is when I have taken a picture with my cell phone and need to improve it before sending off to someone.  Where lens profile adjustments come in handy is with raw files from my D850, as in the example I posted using a 16 - 35 mm lens.  From what I've observed in using ACR and Photoshop, I believe that your statement about the differences between the compliment of camera/lens profiles found in ACR and Photoshop is true.  I guess I'm left wondering why Adobe made some software design decision that created this disparity.  Maybe it comes down to the fact that despite the names used, ACR and Photoshop's Camera Raw Filter are not the same thing.  Without insight into the actual Adobe code base, I can't tell if these two "features"  share some code or have migrated in slightly different directions with their own copy of an intial code base.   ... View more

It was set to italics.  I have not used italics in a long, long, long, long time.  There must be something in the most recent update that set it to italics.  I would never have thought to go to Window>Character.  Window is not an obvious place to look for something related to text. ... View more

Kevin, Thanks for the suggestions.  I did find a couple very good tutorials on the PHLearn site but it looks like the one on layer styles is only available in the paid subscription option.  I was hoping to find something free.  Probably should have included that in my post.       Bill ... View more

I've finnaly had some success when using a much simpler image.  Here's what I did: 1.   I made a slection on my base image (layer 0) of the front surface of the cube and copied the selection to a new layer (Layer 1) above the base image. 2.  With Layer 1 selected I then selected Layer > Layer Style from the menu at the top of the screen. 3.  On the Layer Style pop up window I selected Inner Glow. 4.  I then adusted the parameters available on the Layer Style pop up window. 5.  These actions generated an Inner Glow Effects adjustment added to Layer 1. It did what I wanted.  I suspect this is almost the same as the second method suggest by Semaphoric.   I will continue to experiment.  When I tried to apply it directly to a selection on Layer 0, it applied the adjustment to the entire image, not just the selection.  It worked fine when applied to a Brightness/Contrast layer (Layer 1) that had the front side of the cube selected.   Thanks to all of you who helped me add another technique to my tool bag.      Bill   ... View more

I've tried many times and I think I'm doing what you outlined above using a stroke, but the gradient never gets applied to the selected area.  For the Inner Glow method I think I understand the basic concept of what you are doing, which seems simple and straightforward, but it doesn't work for me.  When I get to the Layer Styles panel I have all the parameters set to values that are shown in your examples.  The preview shows something that should make a difference, but when I click on the OK button no change is made to the image.  I'm probably doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what it is.     Bill ... View more

I believe that's what I did.  Here is a screen capture of the image and the layers panel.  The part that's selected is the darker colored rocks in the middle and leading off to the right edge of the frame.  What you see is an almost final version of the image.  At this point my interest has shifted to just seeing if there's another way to do this, like what you've suggested.     Bill   Here it is with the Color Fill layer: Here it is after the Image > Adjustment > Invert.  What concerns me is that the background are covered with a much lighter color of gray than others areas.  This area was not part of the initial selection, but seems to be acting like it was.  I expected it to be the same gray color as other areas. After applying the Gausian Blur there's a small area outside the selected area that is now visible. And now with opacity set at 25% here's what resulsts.  The background rocks / ridge  is now much lighter than it should be. Hope this gives you some "diagnostic" information.       Bill ... View more

Myra, I appreciate you taking the time to suggest a way for me to do the vignetting of an irregular selection.  I should have mentioned that I'm working with a color image that eventually has a Black&White layer applied.  I have tried doing your steps several times and what seems to happen is that the step where I go to Image > Adjustments > Inverse ends up applying a brightening adjustment outside of the selection, but I need the effect applied inside the selection and it needs to be one that darkens the area adjacent to and inside the selection.  There are places where I don't really have a good sense of how to set the parameters.  For the Solid Color I've been selecting various grays from white to black. It took me some time to figure out that the parameter for the Gaussian Blur affecs the width of the boundary area.  If I don't do the invert step then I get a darker area inside the selection with a gradual blending to the outer edge of the selection which reduces the distinction between the selected area and the surrounding areas and also reduces the brightness of everything outside the selection.  I decided to go back and remake much more precise selections for the 5 areas in the image and deal with them individually using Brightness/Contrast or Curves layers, or actually mess with the color of a selection so that I have better control in the Black&White layer.  Again thanks for your suggestion.      Bill ... View more

Conrad, Thanks very much for the suggestion.  Using the gradient tool worked somewhat in my situation, but the selection to which the vignette needed to be applied was an irregular section of a rock outcropping.  I really needed the vignette applied along the outer boundary of the selection.  The elipse created by the gradient tool doesn't conform very well to the irregular shape of the rocks.  Consequently I get the darkening on some of the rock edges and not others.  What I wanted to achieve was to create more definition between the edges of the rocks in the selection and the rocks that surrounded it.  In other words I was hoping that the vignette would conform to the boundary of the selection rather than an elipse drawn around it.  I might have to take the time to just burn the edge inside the selection. ... View more

Greg, For the image that I was comparing, the Elements Editor opens the window indicating there is no color profile embedded in the image.  My version of the Editor does not have a place to click in the lower left corner as thre is in Photoshop CC that shows the color profile.  The fact that the two programs have some differences in the images they show is not really importan to me from a practical point of view since I'm always going with what Photoshop shows me.  It's just a bit annoying at times.  Since I've been using the Element Organizer to catalog my photos for a long time it would be nice if the two gave the same results.  My post was mainly one generated out of curiosity, hoping that someone would be able to explain why there's a difference.  I don't use the Elements Editor, only the Organizer.     Bill ... View more

[cid:image001.png@01DA633E.08A82390] ... View more

The one thing that I noticed that had been changed in my preferences was the use of the scroll wheel on my mouse.  I reset it to allow it to control zoom of the image.  The Remove Tool still worked after I made the change.  My Remove Tool setting in Preferences are set to "Faster". ... View more

And the preference for the Remove Tool was set to More Stable.  I also tried the other option and had the same crash. ... View more

Kevin, I uninstalled Photoshop from my E: drive, went into the Creative Cloud Desktop, changed the install location to C://Program Files/Adobe/, then reinstalled Photoshop using the CC Desktop.  I noticed that during the installation there was a short pause after the base installation completed and then there was a message displayed saying it was installing the Remove Tool.  I suppose it was considered an update.  I verified that PS was installed on my C: drive and ran the Photoshop.exe directly from the Windows File Explorer.  I loaded an existing .psd file, checked to see if I could modify and existing layer which was successful.  I then tried using the Remove Tool on Layer 0 which is the layer containing the base photo image.  Within a few seconds the Error Reporting window opened up.  I filled out a report and sent it in.   I'M NOW OUT OF IDEAS FOR THINGS TO TRY.  THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG SOMEWHERE!!!! ... View more