Creating images for my banner

The last thing to finish on my inside page is the 'Inside...' banner at the top of the page. I plan to use two or three images with a headline and a small description of the article. I am going to use my front page story, and two other stories that I haven't decided on yet.


To make it look professional, I would like to cut the subjects of my images out, so the banner is the background. I am going to use the pen tool in Photoshop to create a path as I found that last year this is the neatest method. 


Original Image:

Looking at the image here, it also needs brightening, so I will do this when I cut Alice out.


Cut out Image:

Banner: