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Okay, so here's what I'm doing: I'm trying to take a picture I have of myself, isolate myself from my room, and insert myself into all kinds of wacky other scenarios. Using Foreground Select, I got a great cut of myself from the original image, and pasted it into a new blank image with a transparent background so that I can paste it into any image I want. However, if I paste that cut of myself into another image, I look like a paper cutout placed onto a background; it doesn't look like I'm really there. Doing some research on the ol' interwebs, "feathering" the image of myself seems to be the most popular way to do this.

Here's where I'm having trouble: if I feather myself against the transparent background, it... does nothing, because it's both transparent and only a single color anyway (I'm using bright green since it doesn't show up anywhere in the cut of myself). So, obviously, I thought to paste myself into the new image first, then feather the cut of myself. And indeed, when I'm pasted inside of an image, the cut of myself is still selected (until I anchor it). However, at this point, I am not allowed to feather that unanchored image of myself when its pasted to the new image. I can anchor it, sure, but then my selection is immediately lost, and any attempt at re-selecting myself with the foreground tool just results in an inaccurate cut, making the feathering go wonky.

So... how can I feather an image that has been pasted to a different image, but not anchored? Or, does someone have an entirely different way for me to achieve what I'm trying to do?
One way to do it:
1) Paste yourself in the new background image with menu Edit > Paste as > New Layer
2) Show the Channels docks: menu Windows > Dockable dialogs > Channels
3) In the channels docks, click on the Red, Green and Blue channels to deselect them (only the Alpha channel must stay selected)
4) use menu Filter > Blur > Gaussian-blur to blur the Alpha channel
5) Reselect the red, green and blue channels in the channels dock
Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately, I haven't had too much luck with it. If I paste as a new layer, the bright green background is present until I use Color to Alpha to make it the transparent color. I tried this at two different times:
- After I followed all of your instructions, which resulted in no change.
- Immediately after I pasted, which resulted in the green background being blurred into the new image as a sort of halo around me.
I also tried it with white and black as the transparent colors. They essentially do the same thing, and I guess black looks the best, but it doesn't quite look blended. It's better than what I had, but as I'm using this silly little project to essentially delve into some image editing techniques, I'd like to find more ways to do it and get it looking really good.

Still, I learned another method to do it, and it is better than what I had, so thanks.
(01-25-2021, 07:48 AM)HeyGuysItsMe Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately, I haven't had too much luck with it. If I paste as a new layer, the bright green background is present until I use Color to Alpha to make it the transparent color. I tried this at two different times:
- After I followed all of your instructions, which resulted in no change.
- Immediately after I pasted, which resulted in the green background being blurred into the new image as a sort of halo around me.
I also tried it with white and black as the transparent colors. They essentially do the same thing, and I guess black looks the best, but it doesn't quite look blended. It's better than what I had, but as I'm using this silly little project to essentially delve into some image editing techniques, I'd like to find more ways to do it and get it looking really good.

Still, I learned another method to do it, and it is better than what I had, so thanks.

You don't need to feather much, a couple of pixels would do. The main problem when pasting something in an image is the lighting. Incompatible color tones and wrong shadows show our brains that something doesn't belong there. So you cannot really paste a single picture of yourself in multiple images, you gave to take a picture of yourself with appropriate lighting each time.