Best way to cut the gal out?

[ianssln]

Hello, and good day to all. Thank you in advance for any help you may have to offer.

This was my first studio child shoot. The girl was quite energetic, and capturing her in the footbox was tough. I won't even begin to talk about the continuous hair problems, but the mother said she wanted it down. This is definatly not the best photo, but her mom liked it quite a bit. I am using CS2, and I have tried quite a few techniques to fix the upper left of the immage as well as getting the background whiter.



As for the upper left. The hair gives me problems when trying to trace around. The Clone stamp doesn't blend well, and gives the background a fake feel. Same with the healing brush. It tries to blend rather than erase, and just doesn't do it. I have tried to "Extract" from the filter menu, and it gives me choppy edges.

For the background, I have tried to use lens correction "Vignette" this brightens the photo too much. I have tried background erase, and replace with white from the paint bucket. and it too gives me choppy edges. I can use the magic wand for both problems pretty well, but once deleted, and replaced with the beige matching color it shows the edges of the replaced color and I can't figure out how to blend the edges.

Thanks for all your ideas, please feel free to work with the photo. Details on what was done are appreciated.

[OdiN1701]

I had a go at it.

What I did was use the extract filter to get just the girl in her own layer.

Then I made a new layer below the girl, and filled it with white.

I then clicked back on the layer with the girl, and used the history brush to bring back some of the missing pieces extract left out.

I made another layer, and used the history brush to bring back the floor that she was standing on (it will look a little strange with no shadows). I then decreased the opacity, and brightened it up a little bit.

Hard to work from a low res image, but here's what I came up with.

[ianssln]

Thanks, that looks great. It should be easier with my file. I also had the same problem with the hand and such, as this is the first time I had tried the technique. What you have done is right out of "The Photoshop CS2 book for digital photographers" I just couldn't get it to look smooth around the edges. How far would you zoom, and what size pen would you use to extract considering a max 4096 x 6144 size straight from Bridge?

Thanks again.