Smoothing and extracton?

[chryslergreen]

I know there was a tutorial on this site somewhere about extracting, but I can't seem to find it. I'd like to extract my son from the picture, which I have done, but his outline is still choppy. How can I smooth out the edges?

I've tried Select>Modify>Smooth
and Select>Feather and then played around with the pixels.

This will smooth out my marching ants, but not he actual outline of my son. I attached the picture so you can see what I mean.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[Sarah Ellsworth]

If you ctrl + click and get the marching ants around him then choose your selection tool and right click on him and choose ''feather''. Then you have to create a new layer via copy and hide your original layer. That will help fade him into the background a little bit and not make him look so cut-out. I hope that makes sense. That's how I do it, but Ithere may be a quicker.

[LucyLu]

there is a tip on the DSM site for this

[chryslergreen]

Then you have to create a new layer via copy and hide your original layer.

Not sure how to do this part...

[Sarah Ellsworth]

Once you right click and feather it, all you need to do is right click it again and choose "layer via copy". Then on your layers pallet just hide the old layer because it's not feathered. Once it's hidden you should be able to see the new, feathered one. Sometimes if I'm still left with a few hard edges I will go back over the edges with the smudge tool and smooth them out. Hope that helps.

[crystalclark87]

a really EASY way to do it is to is take your smudge tool and go around the edges that are too choppy... Or, you can take a really soft eraser with a lower opacity and go around the edges...

What you should do in the very beginning... trace around your image that you are extracting and before you erase the background.. right click an press feather and type in 1.. Then press delete... That should help you to not have messy edges!

[chryslergreen]

Thanks Crystal, I'll try the smudge tool. I should have done the feathering first, that's right... if the smudge doesn't work I'll start all over and try that. Thanks guys!