CS3 Help with Masking

[maverick911]

I have returned to Masking after not using it for some time and I still cant get it!
Could somebody help please?

I am working on a portrait. I want to mask the subject so that I can Spot Heal the background.

I have attached an image of the screen with where I am so far.

[mistermonday]

Why do you feel it is necessary to mask the subject in order to heal the background??
If you are concerned with the properties of the Healing Brush that smudges color when the area to be healed borders and is partly connected to a dissimilar and contrasting color, then you should be using the Clone stamp OR better still, perform a Frequency Separation of the image and do all your healing and cloning on the High Frequency layer.
Regards, Murray

[maverick911]

Thanks Murray. I have found that Spot Healing does very little to this image with a small brush size. It seems quite effective with a larger brush size but then copies data from the subject in the portrait.

[mistermonday]

If you frequency separate the image (Radius of 4px worked on the low res version you attached), then you can use a large brush to heal over the bg on the HF layer. If you feel more comfortable protecting the woman and working more quickly with a larger brush, you can make a very rough slection of her with the Quick Select tool, then invert the selection, activate the HF layer and heal away with a large brush. You can then jump to the Low Freq (GB) layer and paint on it to even out the color of the bg which seems to have patches of gray where the color has faded away.
Initially I asked the question: do I want to just remove some of the large spots on the BG and leave it grainy / gritty looking, or do I want to smooth out the whole BG? This is a vintage old image and I find that it looks good either way.
Regards, Murray

[maverick911]

Great tips thank you very much Murray

[Cathy Duncan]

Yeah dude the procedure is the same as described. Thanks for this valuable suggestion, mistermonday.