A simple and funky photo treatment is to create "cutouts" using the Magic Wand Tool in Photoshop. All it takes is a bit of patience and the marvelous Magic Wand.

To prepare for your layout, open a new 12" x 12" document and select a background paper. I chose a grungy one from the Urban Gazette Collection by Mandy Steward.

Open your photo and begin creating your "cutout" by selecting the Magic Wand Tool and clicking on extraneous areas of the picture. Once they've been highlighted, Edit> Cut.

When you're working with the Magic Wand, the key to remember is, as our sample layout says, "All good work is done as the ants do things: little by little." Highlight around the image and Edit> Cut what you don't want. Sometimes, the Magic Wand will include part of your photo. To fine-tune the tool, adjust the Tolerance to a lower number.

Once you've got the bulk of extraneous image deleted, then you'll want to fine-tune the details. For this purpose, blow up your image to 75% to 100% screen size and work on a section at a time. You may continue to use the Magic Wand, or use the Eraser Tool, selecting a small round brush. (By comparison, the image above is at 33%, but it is not detailed enough to delete individual pixels.)

Work a section at a time close-up until the photo is clean of stray pixels.

Your finished photo will have clean edges.

To double-check your work, fill a layer below the photo with white. Any stray pixels will show up clearly for removal.

You can complete the layout with papers, alphas and embellishments from Urban Gazette as we did. Or you can print this image, decoupage or glue it on chipboard with a chipboard stand and have a cool, funky 2-D stand up for a desk, shelf or shadow box.

Layout by Ann Hetzel Gunkel

Tutorial written by Ann Hetzel Gunkel

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