Thanks for concise reply...
bleirer wrote:
If you have Photoshop, the sort of easy way is to use the erase background tool. It is on the left, right click the eraser tool to see the background eraser option. It is tedious and you have to save often and save versions, but you can set the sensitivity of the tool to tell it how much contrast to consider background. If it erases too much change the slider to the left to distinguish more finely. Click contiguous and sample once for the most control. Just click with the cross on the tool outside the subject, but the circle in the subject. It makes what you erase transparent so whatever layer is below is revealed. Control-z to undo mistakes. You can put another pic in the layer below or add a full layer to pick a color. There are other settings in the tool to make it more sensitive.
A quicker way but more technical and difficult is the refine edge tool. You have to use the selection tool throughly outline the area, choose select and mask from the menu, then pick the refine edge brush to paint the edge. This is much more complex. You can smooth, feather, control contrast, etc. If you choose 'output to selection' you can invert the selection under the selection menu and simply hit the delete button to erase it. Even better but even more complicated is choose 'output to new layer with layer mask.' Here if you made an error you can use a white or black paintbrush to reveal more or hide more.
If you are trying to separate the cat from the bed, you will have difficulty in every method where the cat fur and bed fur are so similar. The program will have trouble sensing the difference. You can use the regular eraser tool and zoom in and laboriously erase dot by dot the unwanted part. Or if you used the mask, zoom in with white or black brush.
If you have Photoshop, the sort of easy way is to ... (
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