OK, advice or direction needed please. Say I want to take a head and put it on a body. The new head I am using has LOTS of hair. How do I manage to keep the outside edges of the hair looking right? Anyone? THANKS!

the best way i found is to use the extract filter-try that d-man

For me, it depends on how much detail you will be able to see in the final product. If it's an average psc sized pic, I'd go ahead and cutout out little sections of hair that stick out on the edges during your cutout, unless you have a picture with a muted background where you can use a mass selection tool (color select, etc). Then if you need more detail, you could make a new layer and brush in indivdual strands with a very small brush and use slight blurring to make it look convincingly smooth, and maybe even some layer effects for highlights. But whatever you do, make sure anything that you custom-make matches up in both quality and color with the original.

Hope this helps.

another simple way to do it is to just use a one-pixel eraser and cut the outside edges a bit...make the edges somewhat jagged and uneven, like real hair. If this guy/gal has a lot of hair to spare, no one will notice that you did a slight bit of cutting around the edges. Below is a recent example I did, the guy in the foreground (not that it's perfect, but it's decent enough to make the point, I think).

http://photoshopcontest.com/view-entry/76845/display.html

Personally I like to use a layer mask, you have a lot of control and unlimited editing.

And you don't alter the original image.

Check this out:
http://photoshopcontest.com/tutorials/9/masks.html

I found it very helpful! You can thank ledirlo.

Editing hair is the best use I've found for the bristle brushes in the paintbrush palette.



You can use them either to erase a believable edge around the hair, or to paint in real-looking hairs.

That IS a good one Cynn.

Sample of hair that was cut out/painted/integrated with the hairy brushes:

SHAVE IT!

....sorry dew, but someone had to say it

Cynn's way is good too

Thanks for all the tips. Now to see if I can make it happen!