Horrid White-Dots after using Magic Wand

[bird0l0v3]

Ok, so I'm starting to make graphics. I noticed that when you use the 'Magic Wand', it doesnt always come out cut perfectly. There are these little annoying white dots!!!

I think it looks really ugly and unprofessional. How can you get rid of them? If you can't get rid of them, how can you make the outside selection (where the dots are) glow? Maybe that will make it blend in?

EXAMPLE:

My banner came out well, except for the horrid dots around the outside of the creature!

Is there anyone who can help me? Please tell me either (preferably both ways) how to make the egdes glow, and how to get rid of the white dots...Thanks soooooooooooooooooooooooooo much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BoltBait]

Use the feather plugin of my plugin pack. (Link in sig)

[Crazy Man Dan]

Those white dots are the leftover smoothing pixels that the magic wand didn't pick up.

If you zoom in close on an image, you can see that the edges of most outlines aren't a solid color. Since pixels are square, you need smoothing pixels to make curved lines appear smooth and round, a technique called anti-aliasing. The problem with this is that it can play havoc with the Magic Wand tool, since the white background stops being white before it actually reaches the black outline.

Selected at 50% Tolerance:

The Magic Wand has a setting called Tolerance, and this Tolerance is what tells it how far from the original color to keep selecting pixels. If your Tolerance is at 0, when you click on a white pixel it will select only the white pixels. If you set the Tolerance to 100, it'll select everything, regardless of color. By playing with the Tolerance setting - the blue bar that appears in the toolbar when you choose the Magic Wand tool - you can set it where it will select more of the smoothing pixels, thus reducing those white dots around your cutout.