Removing assets from a background cleanly in Photoshop

Question

When I am working on projects at work, a lot of clients send me assets which are on backgrounds and I quite often have to spend a lot of time removing them.

I currently do this by either using the Magic Wand Tool and selecting as much as I can to remove or by using the marquee tool and reducing the amount I have to remove and then I usually use a soft eraser to tidy things up. This is quite time consuming..

I was wondering what ways or any other efficient means that you have of removing things from a background, i.e an image like the below without it looking as if its fuzzy around the edges, or as if there is an outer glow on the person or without leaving any rough edges etc:

Any suggestions/hints and tips you have would be really useful. I am just looking to see if there is any way in which I could perhaps do this more efficiently.

Answer 1

The best and most accurate way to isolate your subject from the background would be to trace it with the Pen Tool, then create a selection from that path. This is, however, also far more time consuming than I ever care for.

I usually trace around the subject, using the Polygonal Lasso Tool. The Magnetic Lasso is also good, but I like the manual control of the polygonal one more.

Once you've made your selection, click the Select and Mask button at the top

I like to use the Overlay or On White modes for me view, but that's up to you and what you like. You can see I selected a tiny bit of the player's arm.

You can also adjust the various settings to refine your selection.