Im' new to photoshop. If i have a picture of like a head shot of a person w/ a background, how would i remove that background so it's just white under the person's head, but have a decent border about the person's head. Or like transparnet under the person's head. Thanks.

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apesnater, you are a nasty cuss.

ok, use the magic wand and hit delete.......

you're not an angel yourself mojogoing, DeathCry, is a bit sick if you ask me ...(o;

I did intend my comment above as a compliment

I believe the magic wand only selects one color right? What if I wanted to edit out a background that's of multiple colors?

You could adjust the tolerance of the magic wand. There is also a color range select option under the "Select" menu.

The best way to isolate a multi colour figure from a multi colour background is to carefully draw around it with the lasoo tool.(Thats the one next to the magic wand in apesnaters diagram).Once you join back up with your starting point you have made a "selection" of the figure.As its the background you want to play with go to the drop down menu "selection - inverse".Now go to edit-fill,and you can fill it with your foreground colour,or play around with it anyway you wish without affecting the figure.

you can also use SHIFT+Magic Wand to select multiple areas

If you have version 6 (I can't remember if it was in 5.5) you could use 'Extract'. Use the pen on the Extract screen to outline the bits you want to keep, make sure that there are no gaps in the outline and then use 'Fill' on the bit you want to keep. Click the 'Preview' button and Photoshop will remove all the unwanted bits. Use the edge touch up tools if necessary before clicking OK. Hope that helps.

Sorry, I can't remember right now how I exactly did it (some time ago), but depending on what you want to do, the masking tools might be of help for you. Paint a mask on the figure (easier than a selection), then fill the remaining area with the filling tool with white (the figure will be protected by the mask). The white part, if I remember it right, can be turned transparent without changing the opacity of the masked area. The selection by the magic wand will work also (and easier than before masking), you can then invert the selection... I don't know HOW I mangaed this, but once I was able to change the mask into a selection (I was playing around, so I can't reproduce what I did, but maybe it will help you...).

the best way to get rid of a background depends on how complex the background as well as the thing you want to isolate is (are?)

huh?

so well anyways, here's a whole bunch of different ways to get rid of backgrounds.