>>1383246i use CS5 and the magic wand/eraser tool. keep the magic wand tolerance around 15, and make sure "contiguous" is checked, or you will catch spots of the same color when youre adding areas of the background while shift+clicking. I check antialiasing if its an image thats on a colored background like
>>1383161>>1383162to cut it closer to the edges of the image. magnetic lasso is good for tracing over dark spots/edges the wand can't differentiate between. right click, then select inverse,.then click "refine edge" with the magic wand, and click smart radius (i usually leave it around .5 ish, depending on the size of the image). in this instance, i shifted the edge inward to remove a lot of the white lines around the selection, then used a small amount of feather and contrast. smoothing edges gets rid of the sharp detailed lines you'll find in hair so be careful with that. then i just use a 1pix size eraser to get the small spots. if the edges erase too jagged, use the blur tool on a lower strength with "darken" and no background layer to make it a bit smoother. sometimes i add stroke if it doesnt look too bad as a layer effect, and this also helps catch stray pixels as it puts an outline on the image. i didnt use it in this case, but i used an inner shadow to make the image edges a tad darker, then auto toned it. ive read one or two tutorials that involved using more filters for creating your own backgrounds, but only ever use them when putting one image against another. its a hobby i picked up and have been doing for a few years, and i am pretty much self taught on it. tried gimp, and it wasnt very user friendly - definatley get used to photoshop. its awesome.
