Remove Background?

Wow! Thank you everyone, i learned new things thanks to your help.

The method of Mylenium is really awesome, i have never imaged that we can

do that to removed background, the result is absolutely perfect.

- I had tried Background Eraser before but the image lost some detail

- I don't really understand how did JJMack removed white background as he said

"Also using copies and blend mode you can actually remove all a white from an image

merging the layers if you need to. Its like lifting the sketch off the paper so you can paint

under your sketch."

Thank you everyone, again, you saved my day

It is very easy to remove a white background without removing anything?  You can use blend if gray or simply use blend mode multiply.

Also using copies and blend mode you can actually remove all a white from an image merging the layers if you need to. Its like lifting the sketch off the paper so you can paint under your sketch.

There are also free applications that can trace a sketch and save a vector file like an SVG.  Which could be place into Photoshop or opened with Photoshop. Unfortunately Photoshop does not open SVG files as vector layers but you can use the layer alpha channel to create a path you define a custom shape with.  These applications work best when the Image is pure black and pure white.  Grayscale image can look quite good converted to a shape however it will depend on the tolerance the application uses to trace black. How well it will work.  Adjusting the gray with the Levels middle gray slider to adjust the grayscale sketch can be used to create different shapes by tracing the adjusted sketch.

Just to prove there is more than one way to do things, an alternative is to use the background eraser tool. To be honest your images arn't as sharp as the coat of arms image but as you can see below you can get reasonable results.

Simply press 'shift E on the keyboard until you get the the 'background eraser ' tool as seen below.

Set the properties like I have below and click the white background to set the erase color. Paint over the hand removing the white and leaving behind black and grey.

Then simply use a 'levels' adjustment layer clipped to the hand layer (layer 0) By adjusting the sliders you can get a fully black image with whatever brightness you want.

This is some image files if you want to try