Martin, I thought I
had already mentioned that method of selection a few posts back.
What would really make the coins stand out in some of the pictures above would be a
bit of shadow. I must admit that I have only ever tried it on single coins -example below- but it should be possible, with a
bit of patience, to create a shadow for each individual coin in a multiple image. In Paintshop
Pro, this would be the way to do it:
Select an image of a coin as described above paste it into a new picture, with it's own layer.
Create a duplicate of that layer and temporarily turn off the new layer.
On the original (lower) layer, change the image to greyscale, blur it considerablly and move it slightly down and to the right.
Turn down the opacity, i.e. make it semi-transparent.
Turn the top layer back on and you have a picture of a coin with a shadow.
You would then need to create extra layers to do the same thing with more coins, though off course you probably only need to do the operation once with the 'underneath' coins and again with the 'top' coins.