This method is best if your subject is surrounded by contrasting colors and objects. If everything is similar in color or shadowed heavily your selection tool will probably select the whole page. Open your picture and go to View>Fit on Screen. Once your document is easier to see and work with choose your selection tool and click at the edges of your subject. If the tool selects small portions of the background that is okay, you can clean up stray pixels later.

Now that your subject is selected (if you have marching ants surrounding the entire subject) you want to go to Select> Select Inverse, this will select all of the background as your work area. Choose your eraser from the tool pallette and change its size to cover the space of your picture. Now glide it over your workspace by holding down your right click of your mouse. This will eliminate everything but what your subject. Go back to Select and choose Deselect to get rid of the marching ants.

Choose the magnifying glass and zoom in on your picture until you can clearly see any stray pixels that were left behind. Choose your eraser once again nad change the size so that you can easily and cleanly erase these pixels. If your subject has a white background, choose the Magic Eraser and click anywhere on that background and it will leave your subject on a transparent background. You are now ready to place your subject on other backgroundswithout the pesky noise that surrounded it before. If you are going to close this picture before you use it make sure to save as a .png file.

Goodnight and remember to kiss your babies.

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