This is the original image (reduced in size) as taken from an Epson digital camera I borrowed from a friend. As you can see, the model is photographed against a white piece of foam board. I place my models on top of a table covered with plain white letter size paper. I use an overhead light directly over the model where possible. In this shot, I chose to hold the model myself while taking the image. I found that when I attempted to place the model on its side and shoot from above the model, my own body partially blocked the light source and created unwanted shadows. (By the way, holding models yourself is a very bad idea unless you have a very steady hand. Now instead of just having camera shake to deal with, you have shake in the source itself. If you use this technique, use a very high shutter speed or your image quality will suffer.) I use white paper as a backdrop because it makes it very easy to remove shadows, items I don't want in the picture, and to replace the background digitally. A single overhead light source works well for me because it simulates the position of the sun (although my bulb creates more of a yellow tint as compared to natural sunlight. This also makes shadows easier to deal with by keeping the number of light sources low and of a consistent angle. I avoid using a macro lens when possible. The focal length on my camera in macro mode was way too narrow for my purposes. (With my Nikon 990, I use the macro mode almost exclusively. I guess this really depends on your camera and on the quality of your macro mode.)
	The first thing I do with the image once I have acquired it on my desktop machine is open it in Adobe Photoshop and save it in native Photoshop format. This prevents image degradation while I am editing the file. (If you save the file as a JPEG each save may introduce additional compression noise as the file is recompressed.) Usually at this point, I reduce the image to a more manageable size (roughly 50%). I use the Magic Wand tool in Photoshop to select the white and unwanted background areas in my image, holding down the shift key to extend the selection as I click contiguous areas.
	Once I have roughly selected the background, I refine my selection using the quick mask tool. Areas that are selected appear in a red mask. This allows me to use my brushes to paint out unwanted areas. You can see from the image at the left that I am carefully painting out the hand. I also carefully paint out any of the "holes" in the model through which the background should be visible. The red areas represent the area that is masked or not selected.
	Once I have carefully refined my selection to include the entire unwanted background area, I save my selection, name it, and fill the selection with a neutral color like white. I then crop the image as desired to remove any unwanted negative space.
	Now it is time for color correction. Usually the raw images from the camera turn out really dark. PC's have really dark gammas as compared with my Mac, so I typically over-lighten my images so they don't appear too dark on a PC. I typically use the Adjust Brightness/Contrast dialog to lighten the image and increase contrast, and then I use the Variations plugin to perform more delicate color correction. It is important to pay attention to color clipping. I usually use adjustment layers so that I am not affecting my original images.
	Now the image is almost finished. I load my saved selection and fill in the background with either a neutral shade, background image, or use the Render Clouds plugin. Voila! This sequence is typical of a majority of my images (although usually, I don't have to remove any hands). For a more complicated example, read on!