glassgerl

I've always been useless with Photoshop and up until I found Paint.NET, I've stuck to the basic Microsoft Paint program(which is far too limited for obvious reasons). I've found Paint.NET to be quite promising and it seems to be a better program all around for my needs and I'm anxious to learn all that I can. That being said, since I found and downloaded it last week, I'm still having trouble with even the basics of this program. :oops: I've searched through this forum yet I seem to find even the newbie tutorials to be a little confusing and I can't seem to get the results/answers that I'm looking for. Is there anybody out there who can help me? I have 2 different pictures that need to be cleaned up and I just don't know where to begin. I followed one tutorial here which was to remove the background and here is the result that I ended up with: I have no idea where I went wrong, the picture looks worse than it did before! This is the image that I started with: My goal is to remove the flaws, and clean up the image(I really hope that making sense here). My camera has picked up details that aren't seen by the naked eye. I'd also like to be able to remove the black paint specks that are showing up inside the shoe(on the green part) and I want a transparent background. The straps of the shoes look terrible and I'd really like them too look smoother, like they do in person. Along with the straps, the black paint is rather rough looking and I'd like to fix this too. There are also little silver beadlike details in the center of the flowers, which seem to have been washed out and if possible, I want to be able to show this feature too. These shoes are so cute in person and the camera just makes them look horrible. I've been told by my Photoshop friends that this can be fixed and I'm hoping they're right! Could somebody please help me? Any help, tips or advice would be very appreciated!

I've always been useless with Photoshop and up until I found Paint.NET, I've stuck to the basic Microsoft Paint program(which is far too limited for obvious reasons). I've found Paint.NET to be quite promising and it seems to be a better program all around for my needs and I'm anxious to learn all that I can. That being said, since I found and downloaded it last week, I'm still having trouble with even the basics of this program. :oops: I've searched through this forum yet I seem to find even the newbie tutorials to be a little confusing and I can't seem to get the results/answers that I'm looking for. Is there anybody out there who can help me? I have 2 different pictures that need to be cleaned up and I just don't know where to begin. I followed one tutorial here which was to remove the background and here is the result that I ended up with: I have no idea where I went wrong, the picture looks worse than it did before! This is the image that I started with: My goal is to remove the flaws, and clean up the image(I really hope that making sense here). My camera has picked up details that aren't seen by the naked eye. I'd also like to be able to remove the black paint specks that are showing up inside the shoe(on the green part) and I want a transparent background. The straps of the shoes look terrible and I'd really like them too look smoother, like they do in person. Along with the straps, the black paint is rather rough looking and I'd like to fix this too. There are also little silver beadlike details in the center of the flowers, which seem to have been washed out and if possible, I want to be able to show this feature too. These shoes are so cute in person and the camera just makes them look horrible. I've been told by my Photoshop friends that this can be fixed and I'm hoping they're right! Could somebody please help me? Any help, tips or advice would be very appreciated!