Extracting a crest from a cockatiel is very difficult. I just get as much as I can and lose the rest, and sometimes I draw some crest feathers in.

If you have the professional version of Photoshop (not the much-cheaper Photoshop Elements software that most people use), there's a complicated technique that will let you do it. I think that maybe the very newest version of Elements will do it too, but I have Elements 8 which is too old to have some of the commands. There are a lot of online articles about how to do it. Search for photoshop extract hair, because selecting flyaway hair is a much more common problem than selecting crest feathers. Here's one article as an example: http://www.photoshopessentials.com/phot ... ting-hair/ It makes my head spin just reading about it.

Bluekeet, what's the artistic element in your picture? Did you black out the background? Because the bird chewing on the bow looks very realistic, and if you extracted the bird from a different picture I'm jealous of your skill lol.

Carolyn, that is a real picture I took with my camera. There's no way in heck I could have done that. That's my entry for the art contest. Elements... no idea there. I just have a trial version of CS6.

For it to be an art contest entry it needs to be altered somehow. Writing "Happy Holidays" on it would do the job.

If you're using a trial version of Photoshop CS6, that's the full-blown professional software. You have the tools to extract a crest if you're brave enough to try out a complicated technique. Apparently Adobe has several other software programs that they call CS6 so it's possible that you're using something else.

There's a trial version of Elements 12 at http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/search/ind ... %3Acatalog If you buy the software, Elements is $70 compared to $700 for Photoshop CS6. I don't know much about the difference between the two programs, but they say that Elements does most of the same stuff and CS6 has additional tools that only professional photographers would need. Elements is complicated enough that I bought a how-to book to help me figure out how it works.

Tisena made a marvelous job on Yoghi's crest when she created the Lord of the Millets. You might want to ask her how she did it, I was impressed! Well, some crests are more complex though.
I am on a different computer tonight so no Gimp or Photoshop here, but I will try something I am thinking about now, on the crests.
What you do in the Gimp is you zoom up an insane amount of % then use the intelligent scissors. What would look like a bad job if done at normal size becomes very detailed if you blow up the image as much as you can. And it's quicker, paradoxically.
I am sure there is a similar trick in photoshop.
Having a good mouse helps enormously too!

Now I need to know what the Lord of the Millets is! The name alone is totally hilarious.

Yes, The Lords of the Millet is a wonderful poster made by Tisena from TalkCockatiels. I started a game where we make movie posters and hers was phenomenal.

I made a movie poster once:



The movie subtitle is "The Curse of the Black Pearl". Notice the black pearl cockatiel cursing at the pirates at the bottom of the poster.

Here's what the original poster looked like:

hahahahh Tielfan that's hilarious! I have the Lords of the Millets right now as wallpaper but The Curse of the Black Pearl is too tempting, if you give me permission I will use it on my laptop
Shame you didn't see that thread, it was an excellent one, funny from the beginning to the end

Sure, you can go ahead and borrow the Curse of the Black Pearl picture. Is it possible to post the Lord of the Millets poster here? Because I'd love to see it. I tried searching for it but didn't get any results except for some references saying that around 7000 BC there was a guy in ancient China called the Lord of the Millets because it was such an important crop. Dang I learn some weird stuff looking up bird-related topics.

P.S. The Black Pearl cockatiel did NOT get an infraction when she cursed on TC. But she did it back in the days when people were not so obsessed with rules, and I bet she wouldn't get away with it now.