When the Quick Selection tool  Keyboard (W) fails because the colors you are selecting are too similar to the background… You can to use a selection tool you can control.  Pressing the keyboard letter L selects the active Lasso tool.  The default is the plain Lasso Tool. For this case select the Magnetic Lasso Tool.

If you haven’t used the lasso tools at all, you might find it a bit frustrating… Or you might find using them fun!

This is from Adobe’s on-line manual on how to use the Magnetic Lasso Tool

On-line Help Document for Using the Magnetic Lasso Tool;

However, I suggest instead you do the following… If you are using CS5

PS Elements selection wizard uses a different selecting method (Paint inside the lines what you want to keep and paint outside the lines with another color for what you want to be transparent —-More about this later)

To use the Quick Selection Tool, press the Keyboard Letter (W) and make sure you’ve selected the Quick Selection Tool and not the Magic Wand.

Go to the Quick Selection Tool’s Option Bar

Choose a small hard edged brush.

Draw inside your dog to select him.  If the selection strays press and HOLD the alt key (PC), Option Key (Mac)

Holding down the option key changes the selection from ADD (+) to SUBTRACT (-)

Subtract the areas you don’t want by painting on them with the alt/option key held down…

You selection should look something like this…

ZOOM in with the zoom tool, and do the best you can when selecting the Whiskers… (I didn’t do a very good job on them at all)

At this point all you need to do is get close, as close as you can, with your selection… we are going to REFINE the selection next…

To Refine the Selection you can choose Refine Edge in the Quick Selection Tool’s Option Bar.Or, You Can invoke the same Dialogue Box with the Menu: Select > Refine Edge…

Or use the Key Board Shortcut Alt Control R (PC) Option Command R (Mac)

You’ll get this window…

If you Press the F key, you’ll see how you selection looks using different backgrounds and methods, keep pressing the F key until you see a checkered background. (The checkers mean the background is transparent.)

Or, just Press the L key to get the “On Layers” View

To see the different ways you can view your selection in the View Mode Box, select the drop down menu, (the downward pointing Arrow… )

The Next Step

In the Edge Detection Area

Check Smart Radius and set the value to 20 pixels (px)

In the Adjust Edge box

Set

Smooth to 3
Feather to  1.3
Contrast to 25%
Shift Edge to 0

The smoothing and feathering will keep the edges soft

Now select the Refine Radius Tool (press the E key)

You can shift between the Refine Radius Tool and the Erase Refinement tool as you paint over the edges of your selection…

Photoshop will recalculate the selection, each time you make a paint stroke… so one stroke at a time, and wait to see your results (your computer is calculating) … You might need to change the numbers to get a better result

The final adjustment is to decontaminate colors (If it’s needed) removes  color fringing along the edges of your selection…

As I worked with your example, I went back and  added a  ”reveal” layer  underneath the  selection…

that way I could see how the selection would look inserted on the new image by pressing the letter R on the keyboard. Or cycle through the different “views”

So, I’ll re-write this so that adding in your new background is the first thing you do…

Enjoy! and

Have fun

See you in class!