Remove Green Screen with Adobe Photoshop Elements

Question

Hi,
I have setup a Green Screen in my home. I took some pictures of my wife with the Green Screen Background and want to remove the Green Screen and replace with a different background. I was able to do this via the Adobe Premiere Elements 7.0 but need help with the Photoshop Elements.
Any help is appreciated.
Sridhar

Answer 1

FWIW, She is really easy to select on that green screen if you use a few tricks. The screen shots are in CS3 my preference but worked with Elements limitations to show you how easy she can be selected without any filters.
My end product doesn't look as good as Mark's though. That's a tough act to follow. Thought I'd post this anyway just in case you couldn't get that filter to work in Photoshop Elements 7,
First, make a copy of the image and desaturate it to make it black and white. I prefer using Hue/Saturation from the image menu (CTRL U) and moving desat slider down to -100. Next Invert it (CTRL I), then run levels from the image menu (CTRL L) to push the image towards pure white and black...well close. It should look something like this when these steps are done.
Copy this image to a new layer. (Just in case something goes wrong so you don't have to repeat the last steps). Leave the copy in Normal blend mode. Grab your paint brush tool. Set the brush tool's mode to Overlay blend mode. You will use black and white paint to push dark gray to black and light gray to white. When done, it should look something like this:
Not perfect...I did this really fast and was a bit sloppy and didn't get all of my light grays pushed to whites. Probably not a problem for the hair edges but would need to be fixed for face and body areas as this will be a mask to make the selection.
Select mask that was just made and copy it into your clipboard. Select<All; Edit<Copy. Create and adustment layer mask that has a mask. I used the Solid Color Fill Adjustment layer. Alt click the mask of the adjustment layer you created. It will turn the document white. This is because the mask is now the focus. Now paste. Edit<Paste. This will paste the above mask into the adjustment layer mask. Now, either alt click the mask or click on another layer to remove the focus from the mask. You'll use this adjustment layer as a base to a clipping mask. See next paragraph.
The Solid color fill layer (or whatever you picked) with your mask is going to be the base on which your selection will be built. Create a copy of your original image up above this base layer. Now, hold in the alt key and move your curser in the layers pallete to the line separating these two layers. Notice the cursor changes to an odd symbol...a solid ring and a hollow ring with an arrow. Click the palette on the line separating these two layers. (Release alt key when done.) She should now be covering the mask you created. Areas that are white in the adjustment layer mask will show the original image; areas in black in the adjustment layer mask will be transparent. (Areas that contain shades of gray would be semi-transparent...amount based on the gray's brightness value.)
For the green cast on the edges, I removed that by using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to remove the green spill over. If you only wanted to effect the girl and not a new background add it to clipping mask. (Same way...alt click the line between her image and the Hue/Saturation layer.)
Not perfect but this is what I came up with based on the above mask: