Step One Crop and Adjust Levels/Lighting.

Select and open the images you wish to deep etch. Before we start you might want to crop the image down from its original size. To the left is the original image before cropping and changing levels. As you can see there is a lot of empty useless space. Bare in mind to leave enough room to play with in case you need to move things around in the frame, and if you have several product shots, do it in a way they all look the same - angle, height etc.

Adjusting Levels can help lighten and differentiate the background colour from the product while preserving the colour of the target image. This is something you learn by trial and error; the three tools are generally Curves, Levels and Contrast. Each image is different. Sometimes the Auto options on these features work well and other times they make it worse. They are found under the Image menu at the top.

Step Two. Using the Magic Wand select and delete the background

Select the Magic Wand tool from the toolbox and then adjust the tolerance level. The tolerance level is how many colours/shades will be selected when you click on the image. In my example I selected a tolerance level of 17, when I clicked on the background it selected all the white background, but not the product. If I used a number as high as 32 it also selects the product. Too lower a number and it does not select all the background. You can also get around this by holding the shift key down and clicking on unselected  areas. Hint, if the wand suddenly selects areas you want to keep,  you can undo a selection by pressing the control and z key or under Edit select undo.

Now the background is selected, I then go to the top menu to Select and then Feather. I normally feather images at one or two pixels. You can try different settings. If you try something and don't like it, hit the Control then Z key to undo and try another setting.

Step Three. Delete, Flatten and Save.

Make sure your background colour is set (In this case to white) and hit the Delete button. Now flatten the image under the main menu Layer option and save to where you need it. The insert above shows the completed image.

Step One.
Creating a Path.

Using the pen tool, slowly work around the object creating an accurate line. In the example above you can see each point I have selected. When you get to difficult curves as per the example above just place the points closer together. After joining the last line we need to save the path you have created or turn it into a selection.

Step Two.
Turn you Path into a Selection.

Go to the menu Paths . You can save the path if you want or just select Make Selection . It will ask you how much of a stroke you want to apply. This is the same as the Feather tool we used before. Again I selected ‘2'

Once again we should have a nice selection line (dotted line as in the previous example of the Magic wand).

Step Three. Delete Background and Save.

If you were to hit the delete button now the image would disappear, because it is the area within the path selected not the background. We need to go back up to the top menu to Select and then Inverse. Everything else apart from your product image is now selected. Press the Delete button.

To clean up, especially if you used the magic wand and there were little bits left over, just use the dust board tool. Then flatten the image and save it where you will be using it. I always advise saving your original, or perhaps the one with the Path saved to it.