Use your channels to create perfectly masked selections. Whenever you want to extract a subject from a photo or remove a background, you can actually your your channels to get the perfect selection.

Here’s how it works:

1. Open up the Channels pallet, it’s usually grouped with your layers pallet. If you can’t find it, just go to your Main Top Menu in Photoshop and find the label “Windows” then from this menu, make sure “Channels” has a check mark next to it. If not, then simply scroll down and click “Channels” and this will open the box.

2. Now, click the icon that looks like an “eye”. You’ll notice it disappears. This means you are hiding the channel. Turn off all the channels except for red. Look at this layer closely and decide if the background has enough separation from the subject. Turn all the channels on and off, one at a time until you find the one that has the most black and white contrast between the foreground and background. Most of the time it is the blue channel or green channel. Once you find the best one, simply make a copy of the channel by clicking and dragging it down to the bottom of the channels window onto the “New Layer” icon.

3. Typically hair tends to turn black in channels, unless your subject has really light hair. You can use levels or curves to adjust the contrast of your duplicated blue, red, or green channel. The goal is to get the subject and/or the background  completely black. Most often you’ll have several shades of gray so you’ll need to also do some touching up.

4. Using a combination of the lasso selection, paint brush and the levels/curves, start selecting large areas and shapes, increasing their contrast and painting over areas that can’t be adjusted. Work your way through the entire document painting, and lassoing to increase contrast until the entire subject is white and the background is black or vice versa.

5. If your subject ends up being black, you’ll need to invert the colors of the channel to get the subject white. Just simply select the channel and then from the Main Menu, use:Image–>Adjustments–>Invert  or  CTRL + IOnce your channel is completely black and white, all you have to do is hold the CTRL key while clicking on the channel and it will automatically select all the white within the channel.

6. Hope back over to your layers menu leaving the selection in place. Make sure your layer is currently active, and then click the Layer Mask Icon at the bottom of the layers menu. It looks like a Circle inside a Rectangle. It will now cut the background out of your photo. If needed you can use Feather or Contract/Expand on the selection to soften it a bit.

7. If there are any little pixels or color information in or around the outlines of the subject, use the burn tool at a minimal setting of about %10 percent and roughly go over the edges hide any stray pixels.

That’s it! These lucky 7 Steps will get the job done.

Have fun!