I would probably try this again using a colored/decorative plate making it a centerpiece. When I took this picture, the background was black; however, the light that I used made it look gray. Since I really wanted the background black, I modified the background using CS4. I started with the magic eraser tool to erase the unwanted background. I replaced it with black. I thought I was done but when I zoom in to 100% it the pumpkin’s outer layer looks jagged. So I had to use the blur tool. Before the eraser part, I made a duplicate of the original image. The duplicate’s blending option was set to darken from normal.
Before:
After:
