This tutorial is designed to show you how to select areas of an image for editing ( or removing altogether) with more precision than is afforded when using the Marquee or Lasso Tool.

1. First choose your image. Any image will do, this is all about editing something to get it to look like you want it to. My image is from http://www.sxc.hu (User Liaj), an excellent stock photography site.

2. Select the Edit in Quick Mask Mode (QMM) from the Toolbar.

Once you are in QMM, choose the Brush Tool and pick a small Hard Round brush. Size 5 and lower is good for getting into those nooks and crannies, but you may use a larger one for big spaces that you need to fill in.

Next Zoom into your image so that you can clearly see the edge of the area that you want to select. With the brush tool (still in Quick Mask Mode remember), begin to fill in the area.

The part that you are painting will appear in red (50% opacity), as shown in the example.

4. Once you do that, you should see the area SURROUNDING the area you painted in QMM selected. You may now edit the image.

You may delete the background by hitting the delete key, leaving you with just solitary image - Figure A.

If I want to change the rose itself. I would go to Select>Inverse, and only the rose would be selected - Figure B.

Or, with the rose selected, I can choose to cut it out entirely, and paste it in another document - Figure C.