What would make this pic look cleaner? Blurring the edges? Or just lasso-ing it

I would forget teh lasso for contrasting edges that need to be clean. It's good for a rough start though. Depending on what you need it for, blurring/softening alone could give you a good enough pic.

If it was a larger pic or needed to be done right, this is how I'd do it:

1. Take the wand and click on the image. Doesn't matter how small or big the area it grabs is.

2. Hit the quick mask button on the bottom left of the image window (That's were it is in GIMP anyway). Shift+Q also works. This should show your pic with a red filter over it except the area that was selected w/ the wand.

3. Now to expand the selection you want, get the paintbrush, select white, and start painting over the are that you want to keep. White basically erases the red "filter" and black will paint red back over. The white is the area you are selecting to keep. Its the same thing as a lasso except you get to paint the area you want to keep.

4. Play with it. Zoom in and out. You will probably have to use some of the black while in the mask when you over paint with white.

5. Once you have the red covering all areas you want to do away with, unmask it and copy, paste into, left click in "floating selection" layer and click new layer. This new layer should be what you want. Teardrop blurs the edges if needed.



There may be easier ways someone can show you, but that's the route I'd take.

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tetu

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whoa. Thank you so much!! You definitely answered my question. I used to play in photoshop and gimp all the time, but I haven't really fooled with it in about a year and a half so I had forgotten all the tricks. Thanks!!!