I just did this (not a shark!) using Paint.net

it takes some tweaking to get it right.

I used to use paintshop pro and haven't got a recent copy - the best part about paint.net is that it is one of those great freebies.

You can do this pretty easily with GIMP.. and it's free.

The selection tools and a little feather usually works for me - you can do this with any image editor worth its merit

Thanks for the advice. I have downloaded GIMP and got it working but I can't figure out how to cut out from a picture and paste it on top of another picture so that both pictures are solid, rather than one or the other being transparent. E.g. I want to take the shark from one picture and stick it onto a different background so that it looks like it is sitting there in its new environment... I need an idiot guide, I'm afraid. Thanks. ;o)

You will need to put both the images (background and foreground) into a single document as 2 layers, one on top of the other.

Then you use one of the selection tools to draw around your foreground object to create a mask.

You can invert this selection to select all that you don't want in the foreground layer and remove it (hitting 'del' usually does the trick). This will give you a floating foreground object on top of your preferred background.

For a more professional look you can feather the selection before you remove it to slightly blur the edge of your foreground object so that it looks like part of your finished image and not just stuck on top.

You can find some good GIMP tutorials here [gimp.net].

I hope this is clear!

Here's another tutorial [linuxfocus.org] that pretty much shows you how to do what you want...

I hope it's OK to drop this URL... I'm not affiliated with the site in any way.

Hi, thanks dillonstars. I will give it a try. The tutorial looks really helpful - just what I wanted to know!