Natural Mandala

Darkroom theme of the week - Mandalas found in nature...this was quite the challenge for me!
The bottom of an acorn, macro. I shot this while it was sitting in a candle holder and tried to figure out how to select the acorn and use layers in PS to put it on a different background. That didn't work for me, so I wound up choosing the background with "magic wand" and dumping "paint brush" where ever that landed. Not so great either; then I used clone tool to get rid of the extra blobs left. Finally went into camera raw filter in PS and played and wound up with this through vignette. There must be a more efficient way!
Taken my Madeline granagringa@granagringa

[katy]

@granagringa It sounds like you went to a lot of trouble but the end result was worth it! A terrific image for the challenge!

[Walks @ 7]

What about trying an elliptical marque tool, then refine the edge using the feather option?

[Shutterbug]

It’s a lovely natural mandala. Certainly worked hard for this, but think of all you learned about PS tools.

[Anne]

What a great example of a natural mandala, you went to so much effort to get this, loving the result!

[Kathy]

A fabulous photo. My PS has a tool called object selection. When it works it's great. I've not seen this video before but have watched many of the 30 days of Photoshop from Phlearn. I find the speaker to be clear and easy to follow. You might find some tips in this video and others in the Phlearn free tutorials. https://youtu.be/lbXd_CaH1Ws
The many photos of mandalas have brought this song back to mind. A real oldie from Peter, Paul and Mary. https://youtu.be/xpIh68Kh_-s