Erasing Whole Backgrounds??

[blakmagyk0024]

i was doing a piece in school and i was trying to erase everything except for the human figure. the only way i know of is using the magic wand tool.. but it is .. so... tedious. does anyone know of a faster way?? would be alot of help. thanks

[Icecold]

In my honest opinion the thing that will help you is masking.

You create a layer mask then u paint with black over it it hides the areas u've painted with black, white makes them visible again.

[blakmagyk0024]

thank you

[element1988]

OK there's a thing i used to do for this, depending on the background it could or could not work.

grab one of the erasers sub tools called something like magic eraser, then hold alt and a cross hair will show, now click the background and start erasing this should keep your figure intact, but still try to not erase over the whole page but go around the edges.

i still haven't fully figured out how to work that tool properly but when i get it right it can save a lot of time, give it a try.

[pokepetter]

It depends a lot on the picture. The less the figure contrasts with the surroundings, the more difficult is it separate them.

You can paint or use the pen tool on layer mask which is the best most time consuming way.
You can also copy the image onto another layer, go to image>adjustments>threshold. That will turn your image into pure black and white. A clean alpha map. There's also the quick selection tool (right click on the magic want tool).