How do I successfully 'extract' an image

Hi there,

This question may seem obvious, but it never stops troubling me.

Say I want to extract a photo of someone and put it onto another picture with all of their strands of hair intact etc - I know you are meant to extract the image in 'extract' and do the highliting and filling etc, but I find this never works. I always get left with a jagged, bitmapped edge, no matter how much I play with the tolerance thingy.

Can someone tell me a definitive way of cutting a face out, as if it were Dirk Benedict on the cover of Corvette Monthly with all of his beautiful strands of hair on show?

hey mont
i have that very tut on my site

http://www.heathrowe.com/tutorials.asp

hope it helps
cheers
heathrowe

Instead of using 'extract' I'd suggest using the 'polygon lasso' its better if u zoom in a bit then 'trace' around the part of the image u want by clicking at specific points then when u reach the point u started at just double click to 'close' the selection, if at any time u make a mistake hit the 'del' key and this will backtrack to the previous point or 'handle'.

Then hit ctrl+C (this copies the selection) and then paste it into ur new image ctrl+V

Hope that makes sense, this is also covered briefly in the helpfiles that come along with photoshop: F1, search under lasso and 'To use the polygonal lasso tool' which will give u an idea of what tool I'm talking about :D

good luck