This started out as a small tutorial, but it got a little bigger.  I first want to say that although this says petsets, you can also use family images.  Make sure you read through all the information because there will also be things such as 60 bright and colorful ornament textures and a variety of options on how to make these. And I want to thank Eaglefeather for his ornament topping which I used on my ornaments.

First let's prepare the image/images to be used.  I used two methods.  One was to airbrush, the other to erase.  Keep in mind that your ornaments will be fairly small on your tree, so you don't have to do a perfect job on this part.  Why are we even using the airbrush and the eraser?  Because they give you a nice, soft edge around your image.

Open the image you want to use.  Decide on a bright color for your ornament.  Set the air brush at 100% opacity with a size of 100.  Use this setting to spray around the image broadly.  When you have quite a lot of your image brushed, change the brush size to 50.  Now get in closer to the image.  For really small areas, you will have to adjust the brush size accordingly.  Here is the first one that I did.

For this one I left some of the image with a touch of the reflection.  I also left a soft, pink glow around Merlin's ears.  I saved this as a b version of the original.  Now I want to be able to use this as a tube.  To do this, add a new raster layer.  Then go back to Layers and Merge/Visible.  You can now export this as a tube.

Here are some other examples of both airbrushing and erasing.  For cats04, I brushed right up to them.  The next two images are using the eraser.  It is a bit harder than airbrushing.  Keep these things in mind.  You can use the selection tool to delete large areas around your image, and then use the eraser.  When you get into tight spots or things such as fur and whiskers, lower the opacity of the eraser to 50%.  For the images where you erased the background, you don't have to add a new layer and merge visible in order to export as a tube.