How do I give these images a white background? Making product shots for wooly items

[Arti5CB3]

I've made some plush toys out of a wool fabric that I am making product shots for. They need a fully white background, but the fine details of the wool keep getting lost when I use the magic wand tool.

I'm intending to make the final image a banner for my website advertising my services (freelance toy designer so these need to look really good!). It's the first thing that the customer will see on my website, so I'm trying to make as good a first impression as possible. How do I give these a transparent / white background that picks up the fine details of the edges and doesn't look too "toothy"? Is my photography suited to doing this? The background is quite grey as opposed to white, so I'm wondering if that's going to pose a problem.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

To be blunt: The photographs are fairly far from good. 

Just look at the waste in the Histogram for this one. 

Anyway, the Magic Wand Tool alone is not a proper Tool for the task. 

You could try Select > Subject, then use Select & Mask and use the Refine Edge Brush Tool. (But this example seems an admittedly fairly easy one.) 

The old-school approach would be looking in the Channels for the best separation and using and combining those manually. 

[Jumpenjax]

https://youtu.be/9YjrRsIQFtY

I would brighten the photo a bit first. Then watch the YouTube video to see how to select object quickly. This shows what c.pfaffenbichler is saying for select and mask.

[D Fosse]

Agree with Jumpenjax, and I would go even further: Masking is not the solution here, and not even necessary. Exposure is the problem. The background already is white, it's just underexposed.

Masking out an underexposed object to put it on a white background rarely looks good. Raising the overall brightness will look much better and more natural. If I couldn't go back to the original raw files here, I'd use a Curves layer with a mask. A soft brush on the mask should fix any uneven light.

The only thing you might want to mask out is the soft shadows, but often that can "anchor" the subject and it may not be a bad thing. If you do want to remove the shadow, it's much better to shoot against a backlit translucent sheet.

[Lumigraphics]

I do product photography for a living and my advice would be to hire someone qualified to reshoot these and maybe teach you how to do them. With a small light table and correct lighting, these will look MUCH better.