Cropping an odd shape

[aka23]

What is an easy way to crop objects that are not square or rounded? For example: a person, a dog, a tree, etc. I have had mediocre results using Photoshop's magnetic lasso to capture the object. It works well when there is a large color difference. It does not work well in certain other instances.

[PacAce]

Most of the time, I use the Polygon Lasso Tool to make my selections. It can get tedious sometimes but with practice it'll become second nature. The first thing I do is make a rough selecion of the object I want to select. I then zoom in to 100% to 200% (and on rare occassions. 400% for really fine details) and make more accurate selections little bits (a screenful) at a time. Press the Shift key to keep adding the the selection you already have so far.

BTW, if you do use this technique, make sure that Feather on the tool bar is set to 0 px.

[PhotosGuy]

Polygon Lasso Tool :
Selecting areas in PhotoShop
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=39994