Best bet is the freehand selection. You can remove the b/g but it's the same thing. You could use the eraser tool to remove the b/g, but you won't get a nice edge. You could also paint in the background and then select & delete it, but you also won't get a nice edge.

Why don't you want to use the selection?

I never get a smooth outline with the selection tool, it turns out choppy. I've never tried doing it zoomed in though, so that may make a difference.

Thanks so much Nikki for your help. You sound very knowledgable so I may have to bug you again.

I use Photoshop on a daily basis but am not familiar with how similar it is to PSP.

If PSP has a Pen tool, you can use that to cut out the person by drawing around him/her and then fine tuning with the selection tool utilizing straight lines and bezier curves. This will form a Path which can then be selected and cut to remove the person or the background.

Jodi-

On the tool options for the freehand selection, make sure antialias is checked and set feather to 1. You can zoom in and remove smaller sections. When you have an area selected, hit delete on the keyboard instead of in PSP, I think it makes it cleaner. Make sure you have the background promoted to layer. You don't have to crop out the whole b/g just enough so that you can isolate your image. Then you can use the eraser tool to get rid of the rest.

Thank Nikki, I'll give that a try and let you know how I get on.

Jodi, I'm seriously thinking about investing in Photoshop because there are some old, tattered photos that I want to restore and that seems to be the best software for that.

Thanks.

Zeetera, I can tell you now that Photoshop is much better at doing that than PSP. I use PSP and I can't do it, but Joe has used Photoshop and he can do it really easily.

Thanks Casey, I may just have to buy it. There's a plugin called AKVIS that looks like it will do restores very easy with Photoshop. It works well with Paint Shop but the selection tools seem a bit better in Photoshop.

Z, if you're going to get Photoshop try to get the full version as the Elements version doesn't have the Pen tool, at least not the one I've seen. It may be missing other tools that I'm not aware of.

The current Photoshop version is CS4 but any of the later CS versions will be just as handy for you at a fraction of the cost.

Jodi-

Thanks Jodi. Gulp! I'll have to really fine tune my skills and make some of that money back! lol. It's not cheap is it. Hopefully I won't need a degree in order to use it.

I did the picture and even though it's choppy in some places it came out good. I want to superimpose it on a background now because the white is too stark. Can I select just the outline now and copy it?

If you like, you can email it to me and I can see what your talking about & try to help.

ggttngmad@yahoodotcom

Thanks Nikki. I sent you two, inlcuding the original.

Thank you so, so much Nikki. It looks great.

I really appreciate it.

I'll see if I can dig up a tutorial on cutting out a background. It's not hard, just have to know the tools and practice.