I've seen a few guides when I've googled, and I've gotten by manually tracing parts of an image that I want to cut and paste into another, but I was wondering if someone suggest the best way of doing it?

I have access to the full photshop suite and gimp.

I dont know exactly what your trying to trace but i use the magnetic lasso tool to trace. if colors are alike then it makes it harder, just adjust the contrast until the colors seperate. then when you have it cut out, put the contrast back to normal.

Or you can use the magic wand tool....but the best way of doing things is using the pen tool and creating a Path. The thing about the pen tool is that you don't have to hold it down to keep something selected, and you can easily modify the selection. You can also export it as vector data too.

Probably the best way is to use a variety of techniques. One of the easiest if the part of the image you want to isolate is a different color is "Color Range" in the "Select" menu. You start with the main color and with the arrow + button add the colors you want to mask. You can move the slider back and forth until you get the disired results.

Once you hit "OK" you'll get a selection which you can then edit in quick mask mode. Press the small box with a circle in it at the bottom of the tool pallette and it will convert the selection to a editable channel that you can paint. The default color is red, here you can clean up whatever the color range didn't do a good job on. Once you get the mask perfect convert back to a selction with the left button and copy and paste into a new document or layer. Or whatever you want to do with it.

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Thanks guys, spoilt for choice now.

I'm especially liking musclecars&computers tutorial.

i would suggest the polygon lasso tool (i think thats waht its called) and click around the edge...because if you use the magnetic one or the magic wand it ends up looking worse

Pick up a copy of Photoshop CS2 Classroom in a Book - and then read every tutorial on the net. By then, you'll know. But one of the better techniques is to use a steady hand, twenty minutes and a quickmask. First go around the image with, say the magnetic lasso, then press - you use black and white to add and remove from the selection, use opacity settings and brush sizes to fine tune your selection. Or you can actually trace the lines in, say . . Illustrator CS2 with the pen (bezier curves) and then import the tracing into Photoshop as a smart object and then use it to mask the image, or use it to create a selection. Hell, it's hard to tell you without seeing the image.

There's definitley enough here to choose from.

While I'm at work I'll play with gimp, then hit up Photoshop when I get home.