More Photoshop Extraction

Over the holidays I took a few pictures of my sister to create a montage of her on the blog. Here is my first step in doing so. Probably the best shot I got of her presented some challenges for me when it came down to editing it. We took the shot in the hallway because it gave me a small space to effectively bounce my flash of the wall.

My first challenge was to get rid of all the distracting stuff in the background, which also included my little brother who decided to stick his head into the shot. The second challenge was the space between her face and the molding on the door. The third challenge that I have that I'm attempting to master is after I have cut the subject out of the photo, making sure the edges don't look all chopped up after I've pasted it on its new background. So here's the shot before editing.

Now, here's the post edited photo.

Here's a list of everything I did:

1. Fix any blemishes that may exist. (Moles, pimples, crusty eyes, lint on shirt, etc.)
2. Dodge white of eyes and teeth to brighten.
3. Add a slight Gaussian Blur Filter to somewhat blur the blouse.
4. Dodge Shadows that may be too harsh
5. Burn hotspots on face that may be too bright
6. Constantly merging layers as I fix each object
7. Brightened the image because I new I wanted to add a Soft Light Blend later. Overlay and Soft Light Blending tend to darken the image, while adding color saturation.
8. Using the Lasso Tool (which I prefer the Pen Tool to make selections, but the Lasso Tool seemed more appropriate since most of the lines were pretty clean and he subject and background contrasted pretty well) to select the subject and copy it to it's own layer
9. Created a new Photoshop File and added a Background color that was equal to the darkest color in the background of the original photo.
10. Pasted the Layer with the extracted subject to the new file with the black background
11. Added a Soft Light Blend to the Layer
12. Added a Gaussian Blur until the skin looked really smooth
13. Added a Layer Mask to remove the Gaussian Blur from the eyes, lips, teeth and anything else I wanted to bring detail back to the image.
14. After merging the layers and duplicating the background, I create a Curve Adjustement later and make the photo almost completely black. By doing this I am attempting to make the edges of the subject flow seamlessly with the black background.
15. Add a Layer Mask to the layer and with the Black paintbrush using a Low Opacity, I undarken the areas of the photo that I want to lighten, making sure to not get to close to the areas of he photo that have hard edges around the subject.
16. Once I'm done, add my signature..and viola! you have the above photo!!!

That's it. Tomorrow I'll post my new pics for my weight lot challenge. Sierra, let me know what you think.