Modifying a picture (removing foreground)

[q-live]

i need to remove the girl from the picture attached. I need the background along so i can put other people on it. I have had a lot of graphics latley where i need to remove the foreground or back ground. Can anyone tell me the best way to do this??? does it have something to do with layers like the girl is on one layer and the background on another??? i use fireworks mainly but if i HAVE TO use adobe photoshot i will.

[CrazyMerlin]

yes, in the beginning it is to do with layer, but it all depends what format the image is.

if it is a digicam shot, then it has no layers.
if it is a jpeg, it has none either. generally images as flattened to a single layer when they are saved except in a few formats.

the only way to do what you want properly is zoom in so the image fills your entire screen (almost) and use a freehand selection tool to draw around the person. Then you can remove the selected region.

it isn't difficult, and the more you do it the easy it becomes.

[Poxicator]

tbh The easiest way to do this is to recreate the background. Get the logo/illustration, create the line effect and keep that as a seperate layer. Then cut-out your models (using layer masks) and import into seperate layers above your new background. Most of the cut-out will be easy but hair always takes time.

[Some1 Somewhere]

Hello all,

I'm just a kid who likes to play with the Gimp. However. I did notice that if you try decomposing. You can get some pretty good selections.

What you do is this, you decompose the image into say: RGB, or HSV, or LAB. When you look at the layers of one or each of these images you see a black and white image of say the Red and Green and Blue layers, OR the Hue and Saturation and Value. Often times one of those ways of decomposing will yield a black and white picture where the area that you want selected will be mostly black or mostly white.

Then all you have to do is copy that layer into the image that you are working on. Then you use one of the simpler methods of selecting. For example the magic wand or the select by color to select the black or white area. It depends on what you're selecting. Then you can go in with the hand selection tool and fine tune the selection.

After all that's done you'll probably want to blur the selection by a few pixels, maybe 5px. It depends on what you're doing.

Now that you have the black and white image selected all you do is switch to the layer that you're working on and turn the selection into a layer mask.

Please realize that there are many ways to do almost everything. This is just one way to do it.

Hope that this helps,
I'm by no means an expert.

Josh