The best results are
achieved by using a photo of your head and shoulders, front facing
with as little of your own hair visible as possible and a light
background. The picture is best around 300x300 pixels. This is not
always available so this page will guide you through making the
photos that are available as close to the ideal as possible.
1. Paint® This
utility is usually installed with most recent versions of
Microsoft Windows® and normally can be found in the
Programs>Accessories folder in the start menu. Paint® is a very
basic picture editing utility that has everything we need in most
cases. Other more advanced free photo editing utilities are linked
to at the bottom of the page.
First step is to crop
the photo down to a head and shoulders shot. Open your file with
Paint® and click on the select tool, the cursor will then turn to
a cross when its over the picture. Click and drag to select the
part of the picture you need (fig 1) and then move it to the top
left (fig 2)
fig 1.
fig 2.
Then move the small
square at the bottom right corner of the whole picture to the
bottom right corner of the required area eliminating the unwanted
parts (fig 3) then resize using the stretch and skew command from
the "image" drop down menu (fig 4). you are aiming for somewhere
between 200x200 and 400x400 (this is not too critical and doesn't
have to be totally square). Change the horizontal and vertical
figures by the same amount or the pictures will distort, check the
size using the attributes command from the same drop down menu.
fig 3.
fig 4.
Trim any excess hair
using the brush tool using either white or the Pick color tool to
match the background (fig 5). The zoom utility from the "view"
drop down menu my be useful here. Removing hair that's over the
face or forehead is a little more tricky (fig 6) but using the
pick color and brush tools and the zoom utility and you will make
a useable picture, for more advanced airbrushing the photo editing
packages at the bottom of this page are free.
fig 5.
fig 6.
If you don't have
Paint® there are many photo editing packages available for free -
a couple of the better ones are below:-
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