> The question is: how can I remove the text, or other pieces 
> of jewelry from the image, and still get the textured 
> background to match? Because the jewelry is so close in 
If you mean "How can I remove certain things but leave others and still
have the 'felt' background behind what I leave" then here is what I do..

This takes patience and practice... I call it "Texture Sampling" :)

It is not important using this method to actually erase what you want
gone, but you can if you want to:
  Use Lasso to capture what you want to remove and delete it from the
  picture.. I usually chose a color to erase to that matches the
  surrounding colors fairly nicely.. but that isn't really necessary.

Now is when the fun part begins :)

Select randomly shaped "globs" of the surrounding texture with the lasso,
then copy and paste them.. move them around until they match effectively
with the section you want to "rebuild"   It is important not to get too
many unique features in the selection (For instance, A small white dot
would stick out too much and a sensitive eye would be able to spot the
texture duplication) It is very rarely impossible to rebuild the missing
section from the surrounding texture.

It takes a little practice, but once you get used to it, then you should
have no troubles at all :)  I took the liberty of 'doctoring' one of your
images for you:

http://www.indy.net/~pfarabee/earrings.gif

Pat

> color to the background, a solid "fill" on the background 
> also wipes out parts of the jewelry!  Even though I have 
> tried every conceivable "tolerance".
> 
> I'd sure like to know if any of you have encountered this 
> type of problem, and if so, how you were able to resolve 
> it!
> Thanks in advance!
> Anita
> 
> anita jackson
> www.web-rider.net
> mailto: girlrdr(at)magicnet.net
> icq:  3910670
> 

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