Best way to crop out an image.

[g0ldenb0y55]

What would be the best and most effective way to crop an image other than the eraser tool?

[kai]

hit "C", make your selection, and hit enter?

[g0ldenb0y55]

I'm sorry, I wasn't very clear.

I want to crop out an object from its existing surroundings and implement it into another.

[Matt Grunau]

Is it going to stay in Photoshop? If you just need to isolate a part of one pic on a layer and you will have another layer under it you want to put it in, use the Layer Mask. You can paint out what you don't want, and paint back in anything you need later. Much better than the eraser tool, cause once you erase and save, that image info is gone for good.

[g0ldenb0y55]

I'm not to familiar with masking, can you post a step by step for me to follow? If you can, that would be great! And yeah, this will stay in photoshop.

[chud13]

I might use the pen tool for something like this. Click on the edge that you want you separate. Continue clicking all the way around the object you want to separate until you close the path by connecting the end to the start. Then, go to the paths menu. You will see your path you created there. Crtl + click that layer and your path will be selected. Go back to the layers tab. You may want to feather your selection a pixel or two. Go to the selection menu at the top to do that and select feather. Then hit crtl + C (copy) and crtl + v (paste). That should paste it to a new layer.

[chulo]

well there could be a couple of ways one would be to use the various lasso tools make a rough outlin of your subject alt subtracts shift adds to your selection, ctrl j makes a new layer from you selection with a transparent background.......if you you have a solid color around your object you could magic wand the color out...not a very good description but it should get you started

[ChrisForbes]

Easiest for a beginner is Quickmask mode.

Bring up your image.
Press "D" that will reset your color swatches
Press "Q" you are now in quickmask mode
Press "B" that is the brush tool
Press CTRL+A select all
Press CTRL+DELETE fill with background color

At this point your image will have a pink haze over it and you are ready to start Masking.

In quick mask mode using your paintbrush white selects . . . . black deselects so everything that is pink will not be selected every thing that is clear will be selected

Using the Brush with white paint. Paint the object you wish to select. If you go off the object by accident just press "x" to change to black and make it pink again.

When you have your mask press "Q" to exit quickmask mode and your mask is now a selection.

Copy and paste or Select inverse and delete or whatever

If you have gone out of Quickmask mode to early just press "Q" again

[ChrisForbes]

Do you know how to use the "Layers" pallete?