Unfortunately there is no easy quick-fix for this

My typical method of choice is; Go to the channels panel, toggle through the Red Green and Blue options to see which has the most contrast, duplicate this layer and then ctrl/cmd+l the levels slider to increase this. Then using the brush on this layer colour in black what you want and white what you don’t. You can then click on this channel for a selection path (ensure you re-click the rgb and uncheck your duplicate channel) and use a layer mask to perform a non-destructive deletion of the area you want to isolate (reverse the selection ctrl/cms + shift + I if necessary).

This site explains it with images too.

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop/l/blrbps_2fwks.htm

There are of course some uglier methods such as the wand too… Depending on the final size of the images, this may be ok. However, for a really high quality cut-out there is no substitute for time.

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answered Jun 21 ’12 at 9:50

edev.io
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I’m glad I’m not the only one still doing this. Old school PS channel techniques FTW. It’s worth noting that if the images were all similar, you could probably do a half decent job using an Action to batch them all. – Marc Edwards Jun 22 ’12 at 3:28
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Just found this for you:

http://www.howtogeek.com/59634/remove-backgrounds-automatically-with-a-free-photoshop-action/

I guess it would work if your client doesn’t need perfect masks for them (which would be okay for a webpage, since everything is small anyway)

But professionally speaking, I would mask them out one by one, just so nothing goes wrong. Anything you do automatic on photoshop is bound to go wrong when you least expect it.

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answered Jul 5 ’12 at 10:36

Sinan
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I just tried this action and it worked great fyi – Yarin Apr 1 ’13 at 3:49
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You can achieve it by creating an Action that then can be used in a batch operation.

The following is a summarized step by step description on how to achieve it in case you already know your way around Photoshop. See further down for detailed description on how to do it:

Open a representable image for recording an action
Create an action and start recording
Flatten the image, make transparency by using magic wand on pixel 0,0, invert the selection and add mask.
Stop recording
Close the image, without saving any changes
Use File->Scripts->’Image Processor’ to run the new action on all files, and export them as TIFF. Do not use JPEG as it does not have an alpha channel.
Done!