Paint Shop Pro X » Smudging the tail
It's hard to crop out one and one hair in the horse's tail, so it's a better idea to pull out hairs with the smudge tool. I'll use this picture:
Start with cutting out the horse, and cut parts of the tail off:
It doesn't look nice, so we need to smudge. Choose the smudge tool:
It might look like one of these tools:
To get the smudge tool, click on the little arrow I've circled, and choose the smudge tool. Choose a small size, and 0 as hardness. I choose different opacities to make a nice effect.
Zoom really well in, and start "pulling" from the tail in a brushing move – like you brush your hair. Pull slower in the beginning, then fast and drop the mouse button. It's hard to explain, but it should feel like you're brushing something. My tail now look like this:
Then I "cut" the edges off a little with the eraser brush tool, in size 30 with hardness 0 and opacity 100%.
You might have seen this type of tail:
And that is not how a horse tail looks like ;) just check the original picture. Adult horses don't have bushy tails.
If you don't pull hairs with a brushing movement, your horse's tail will end up like this:
And I don’t think that looks natural.