Photography for Magazine cover

I decided to use the photo of the boy reading the book for my magazine cover, I cropped him out the original photo and put him on a new image again, I did this because before, the cropping wasn't very good as it was just a draft, but now I wanted to crop the boy really well and I think I did an okay job.

First I opened the image up in Photoshop and cropped around the boy and the book using the magnetic lasso tool, I then copy and pasted it onto a new image so it was a white background, I then used the rubber tool to cover the bits I didn't crop very well. I then used the spot healing brush tool to cover the blemishes on the boys face. I then used the eyedropper tool to get the colour of the parts of the image I cropped too much of and made gaps to cover up the gaps, I then used the brush tool to do this. I then applied a diffuse glow filter to my image to make it look a bit more edgy. I think the hardest part to crop in my photo was the boys hair as it is curly and looks a bit messy and theres bits I cant get to because of the curls but I think it still professional and this is the first time I have done a proper cropped out photo with filters and the works and I am pleased with the outcome and hopefully it will look well with the rest of my magazine cover.

Here is the original version of my image.

Here is the edited version of my image.