Pulling my hair out trying to figure out Photoshop - Please help!

[Enemies]

Hi, anyone who has any knowledge of photoshop would be a great help. I haven't had photoshop for years and have lost all my knowledge. I have photoshop CS5 at the moment and I'm trying to use a solitary picture of Faith in a banner, except I can't seem to feather the edges right so that its not just cut away with jagged edges? The idea I'm talking about is similar to the banner below (in the sense that its one picture and the edges are soft). If you have any suggestions I'd be grateful cuz I'm getting a tad frustrated now.

Thanks in advance.

 

[LyteHouse]

If you're using CS5 then you're laughing.

Compositing used to be an absolute nightmare but CS5 makes this kind of thing quick and easy.

Just grab your quick selection tool from the left and make a selection over your image (remember you can hold the Alt key if you go too far and want to decrease your selection).

Now hit the REFINE EDGE tab - its on the top task bar near the middle. This is one of the best editions to CS5, it'll isolate your selection and let you go to work on it.

Here, you can feather and smooth your selection to your heart's content.

Where it can be tricky is with HAIR! But all you need to do is check the smart radius box and use your paint brush to paint around the edges of the image you want to fix - when you paint, it will look as if you are actually ADDING to the image but don't worry, the program is actually intellgently detecting which colours you want to remove and when you let go, the image should be much cleaner.

When you're done you can use the drop-down menu at the bottom to move the image to a fresh layer.

Hope that helps. =P

 

[Enemies]

Thank you sooooooooooooooooooooooo much you have help me no end