"Third Time Lucky" wrote: I want to take someone from a picture so I can save it with a transparent
background and then use it as a layer in another photo. My intention is to do this with several pictures and them put them all together onto a nice background if that makes any sense. A kind of life story of a person from a child to an adult.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The critical part of this process is selection, so that the figure can be copied to a layer. My favorite tool for this is the Selection Brush, but I often use it in combination with the Polygonal Lasso and the Magnetic Lasso. Where the figure has hard edges it’s pretty simple–where you’ll run into difficulties is where there is fluffy hair or fine detail in the surroundings that overlap the figure. There are tools for doing this, but I find them troublesome to use.
What you can do to eliminate this problem is include some of the original background with the figure in the difficult areas, and create the background in your composite picture to blend with this. Judicious use of the blur tool will eliminate the hard edges that come with your selections.
I am sure there are other ways to cope with this situation, particularly for those more skilled than I am, but I know I could do a pretty good job doing it my way. The project sounds like a very friendly gesture–I hope it works out well and is appreciated by one and all.
