How to take people and things out of one picture and put them into another picture, using Paint Shop Pro Studio

 1. Launch Paint Shop Pro Studio. Open the image with the figure that you want to take. 

 2. Select the Freehand Selection tool  (2nd tool from the 5th tool group).

 3. In the Tool Options palette just above the picture, set the Selection type to "Point-to-point" and set Feather to 2. (If you can't see the Selection type or Feather, select View => Palettes => Tool Options).

 4. Zoom in anywhere along the edge of the figure you want to cut out. (use mouse wheel or click  ) 

 5. Trace carefully by single-clicking at various points all around the edges of the figure. Be careful not to double-click. (If you accidently include some parts that you don't want, don't worry - you can erase the excess later).  If you goof up, select Selections => Select none and start over.

 6. When you get back to your starting point, right-click (or double-click) to end the trace.

 7. Select Edit => Copy.  

 8. Select File => Browse and open the image that is to be the background. 

 9. Click Edit => Paste => Paste as New Layer. 

10. Use the Move tool   (4th tool in the toolbar) to position the top-layer image as you wish.

11. If the top-layer image is too large or too small, you can adjust its size as needed to make it fit.  There are two ways to resize a layer: you can either:

(a) Select that layer by clicking on it with  the Move tool , select Image => Resize, set the desired size, deselect (un-check) "Resize all layers", and click OK.
OR 
(b) Select that layer by clicking on it with  the Move tool , then click on the Deform tool (second tool group), then drag the small squares on the corners of the box to re-size. Select the hand tool (1st tool) to remove the small squares.

12. If needed, use the pencil eraser tool  to erase the areas of the top image that should be transparent, through which the background will show.  You can change the size of the eraser tool in the tool options palette, making it big when you have large areas to erase and smaller when you are working close to the edges of the top image.  Zoom in and out (use the mouse wheel or click  ) so that you can work more precisely to erase just the desired regions. 

13. Optional: To make the subject stand out more dramatically from the background, use the Move tool  to click on the background, then click Adjust => Blur => Blur More to blur the background.

14. To save the result, select File => Save As..., select "JPEG format (.jpg) from the "Save as type..." pop-up menu, give the file a suitable name, and click Save. This format fuses the two layers into one image. 

Note: If you want to save the cut-out image for later use, after step 7 select Edit => Paste as New Image, then select Save as... and select "Paint Shop Pro Image (.psp)" from the Save as type menu.  Give the file a suitable name and click Save.  Later, you can open this image (the transparent areas will show as a gray-and-white checkerboard in Studio) and start at step 7. 

Hints: (a) When working with layered images, press F8 to show the Layer palette.  This lists all the layers in the picture and highlights the currently active layer.  To make any layer active, click it in this list. (b) You can apply any of the usual image operations to the active layer (contrast-brightness adjustment, etc).  Image operations apply only to the active layer and do not affect the other layers;  (c) This works best if the images are large high-resolution images and if both images are about the same size.

(c) Tom O'Haver, March 2005