Clean up subject edges

[tcednicepics]

Hello Everyone! I am having trouble figuring out how I can clean up the edges of the subjects in pictures. I did make some edits.
Is it just a bad selection job or poor image quality to begin with?
Am I able to fix the edges of the subject by cleaning up the halo around it?

 

[Rich54]

It's possible that you made a poor selection, but there's no way to really say unless you post the original, unedited image. However, for what you've posted, you can clean up the edges using the Pen tool.

For the beak, I made a path with the pen tool, like this:

• Make a selection from this path.
• Optional: feather the selection by one pixel. (Sometimes the pen tool makes such a sharp edge that it can be jarring and fake looking. Your call.)
• Invert the selection. Using the Clone Stamp and a fairly small brush, sample the background color and then use the clone stamp to color-in the outer perimeter of the beak.
• Invert the selection again to work on the interior. Use the clone stamp very carefully to color-in the areas of the beak that are fuzzy.
• Create as many separate Pen paths as you wish and duplicate the same process on other parts of the image.
• Here's my result for the beak area (using a feather of one pixel).

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi @tcednicepics

It would probably have been best to see your original image to see if some similar adjustments could be done without creating the halo. If you provide the same view of the original, forum members could probably provide additional suggestions.

As an another example of what can be done with the image you provided, I used the PS neural filter to reduce JPEG artifacts, followed by using Topzaz Phots AI for strong sharpending and the a PS Camera Raw filter where I added a bit of dehaze, clarity, texture, sharpening, and reduce the highlights a bit.
Of course I did this over the entire image to provide a shaper look over the whole image and not just the edges and they not be what you want.
Just some more ideas of what to consider.
Hope this helps some.
John Wheeler