Background Removal.. once you get the hang of this way of doing it it's much faster, easier, and more effective than using your background eraser. Especially if there's a lot of colors in the background. I don't know about you but that can get really annoying for me. This tutorial will help you learn how to make it easier on yourself and move quicker :) I'll be using this picture for the tutorial..

First off you'll want to paste your picture onto a transparent background that is bigger than the picture itself. I'll paste mine into a 600x600 transparent image like this

Make sure you're on the picture layer before the next step or else it won't work. Get your freehand selection tool and make sure you have it set on "point to point". Zoom way in on your image like this so you can see what you're doing

Click down below the picture and start to outline it like this

I've started on the right side of the picture because that's how it's easiest for me. Continue your way up the picture. It doesn't have to be perfect but get it as close as you can. When you get to the top, drag it clear up, clear to the right, to the bottom, and back to the left (or right depending on the side you started on) back to the spot you first started. Double click to close your selection. Now you should have something like this

Hit Ctrl + h to bring up your feathering window and set it to 5 or 10 pixels. I'm setting mine at 5

Click OK and you should notice that your selection will have become slightly bigger like this

This is okay. It's how you get rid of sharp edges. Feathering will blend and or smooth. Now hit delete 1 to 3 times. It shouldn't take more than that unless you didn't get close enough to the part of the image you aren't wanting to delete. Right click to get rid of the "dancing ants". Now you should have something like this

The whole right side of my background is gone. Now go back to where you left of and outline the other side. When done, you'll have something like this

Feather and delete again untill you get something like this

The background is completely gone. Now you can turn it into a colage or simply place it on a pretty background. This is what I did with it. All I did was add a white border before putting it on the background :) I also changed the colors of her a little by duplicating and hardlighting it and adding a border.

Or you could add a bit more to it like I did in this one. All I did was overlay a texture

It's that easy :) Go for it!