How to isolate white subject from a white background?

Question

I am quite new to photoshop, but I have always been having problems creating products on a pure white background. I need it for online selling, but it is a daunting task for me--especially since I do everything alone. I am just practicing on my photoshop, so don't mind the ugly photograph.

This is my image and efforts, but even the masking layer gets messed up. I am having a hard time finding tutorials online because of different Photoshop versions as well as different/incomplete instructions.

I was watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwB0-gR2lvE

But the tool they said was use the Quick Selection Tool and damn it's just messing all around my image and including the background as well and now I am stuck.

Answer 1

Not a Photoshop-based answer:

You are making things difficult for yourself with your granite background. The first thing to do is to shoot your objects against a plain background, then if needed you select the background and not the object, then invert the selection (but if done properly you can get a background so white that you won't even need to cut it out).

A sheet of printing paper can be a much more practical background than stone. But there are rather cheap accessories such as this to allow you to shoot objects properly against a neutral background (they make it easy to overexpose the background so that it is pure white in the picture).

If you insist in doing it the hard way with Photoshop, search for tutorials on "clipping paths".

Answer to edited question: normally you pick a contrasting background (black for something light). On this very picture, if you look closely, while your background is very neutral (R=G=B), the object itself is slightly blue (R=GGDSE.

Answer 2

The quick selection tool has two modes: adding and removing. When you're adding, the cursor has a + sign inside it; when you're removing, the cursor has a - sign inside it. When the tool has gone too far, as in your picture, start removing. Click the icon in the top tool bar that shows the - sign, and start dragging in the part that should not be in the selection. In this case, that's the handle of the thing in the picture. By switching back and forth between adding and removing you can get closer to what you're after.

There's a shortcut for changing modes; on the MAC it's the Option key; I don't know what it is on a PC. When the tool is in add mode, holding down Option as you drag subtracts. When you release the Option key it goes back to adding.