It dawns on me that there is need for yet another tutorial on cleaning pics for tube use.  Those I have seen leave little room for error and precision and since I get an enormous amount of compliments on the special things I clean, I thought I'd take a crack at teaching my technique to others.  I cannot in good conscience post this tutorial without clarification on 'copyright' for people who don't understand it - I'd hate to be guilty of telling people how to do it and risk their not knowing that cleaning portions of a graphic away does not make it their property.  I'd be doing you a great injustice if I failed to point out that there is a risk in using graphics which other people hold a copyright to.  What you do past this point is not my concern or my business unless you infringe on my own copyrighted material.

Clarification on copyright for those who don't understand it
Part of the thrill of designing graphics for use on the internet is to come up with something no one else has;  something you can call your own instead of just nabbing a graphic from someone else.  If you grab a graphic or from another site or scan one in with a scanner, can you claim it as your own?  Can you post rules or terms for use or require a link for said use?  The answer to both questions is 'NO'.  Though you spend hours of cleaning the graphic, it is not yours - all rights still belong to the original artist whether it comes from a digital picture or another form of artistry.  Don't claim it as your own, or even allow yourself to think that since you spent so much time cleaning it that the effort made it yours - it didn't!

Is this image in the tutorial mine?  No!
Did I do the work to clean it?  Yes!
If I would post it to my site for download by others and the original artist should see it and tell me to take it down, do I have to?  Yes!
Do I have the right to tell anyone else they cannot clean the same graphic and post it for download?  No!
Could I in good ethics, have grabbed a cleaned one from some site and post it for download as my work?  No!
If someone grabs yours and posts it for download, can you insist they take it down?  No!  It's not yours!
If, on the other hand, you took this picture yourself with a camera and scanned it in, is it yours?  Absolutely!
If you took the original picture with a digital camera, is it yours?  Absolutely!
If you drew the picture and scanned it in, is it yours?  Absolutely!
 

Now on to the tutorial!

For the purpose of this tutorial, I am using a scanned picture from a postcard my mother got in the mail many years ago.  (I love my mother!  She gets all kinds of things in the mail!). 
Please!  Please, don't try to clean that little bitty robin!  It's too small to learn with.  If you don't have an image, use this owl and when all steps are completed, re-size to a maximum of 500 pixels in height for best quality.

I've found that some people  have problems with this tutorial because 'auto resize' is turned on - so go to File, Preferences, General Program Preferences, View tab - you will see two settings for  'Auto Resisze' - UNcheck them and close preferences.

Before beginning, prepare the graphic by duplicating the layer and then deleting the background so that the deleted sections will be transparent - do this by using 'Layers' menu and selecting 'duplicate', then use 'Layers' menu and select 'background', then use 'Layers' menu and select 'delete'.  *OR go to Layers menu and select  'Promote to Layer'.

1.  Open the image you wish to use (prepare it accorinding to the above procedure) (ANY IMAGE YOU CHOOSE) in your PSP - any version.
2.  If the image is small, zoom in on it using the zoom tool  several times.
3.  If scanning in an image, scan it in at resolution of 300 dpi and 100% on scaling.
4.  When the image is ready to begin actual work, the tools you will need are:  Extreme patience;  persistence;  no distractions;  a clean mouse and the 'lasso' selection tool .
5.  Next, we will set the attributes of the 'lasso' tool.  Note*  if you have a steadier hand than me, go ahead and do it the sloppy way using long strokes and the 'freehand setting';  if you want true quality - I advise you to use the settings I have used.  Set first tab (in PSP6, this will be in the 'Options Control' box - in PSP7, it will be in the 'Tools Option' box) to 
 
and second tab to .

6.  How to use the Lasso tool at these settings:  Use the very central precision dot to start your point to point (do not try to drag, let go of the mouse button!);  if on a straight path, set the next point on the precise line you want your path to take by putting the central dot of the precision brush on the very pixel by clicking the mouse button again (to end a selection chunk, you double-click just a bit away from the beginning), but if there is the slightest curvature to the path you are following, take very small areas;  the more curves - the smaller chunks you want to select.  What we are doing here is the most important part - we are following the basic shape of the pic we are cleaning and creating a path for major cut-a-ways.  Make your selections along the path very precise as this denotes the quality you will get in your final work - (we want to sculpture the cutting line for realism) then when you move away from the path to select a chunk for cutting, clear enough of a path to set the cleaned object away from the background.  Here are samples of the selections I use and the more intricate the edge of the path, the smaller chunks I select.  Make your selection and hit the 'delete' key, then move on to another selection.
       
       

7.  No matter how steady a hand you have, a mouse moves on a square basis and when you have cleared a path around the portion you want to cutout from the background - you will have small places that don't look smooth as denoted by arrows in this pic  now we clean them!

8.  To clean these small jags, you will make very small selections to improve the the selection edge such as in this pic  the purpose of this step is to perfect the shape of your image and requires a real desire to  perfect the piece of work you're involved in.  An image with a lot of curvature and many jags such as a flower with lots of jags to the leaves and thorns or very ruffly petals will require much more patience than a pic with basically smooth lines.

9.  When you have cleaned up all of your lines and whittled out any spaces that are not a part of the pic you want - like little bitty areas between leaves where the other background is showing through and you are completely happy with the appearance, you will have something like this .

10.  Now, you can change the setting of the 'lasso' tool to the freehand setting if you're a glutten for punishment or have a very steady hand ;  I leave it set to 'Point to Point' and select the image area by going down the middle of the path I've created and selecting the image like this , when I have set the area by double-clicking, I click once into the center of the selected image to close in the selection like this .
11.  Next step is to use the 'Selection' menu and choose the 'Invert selection'; now the area outside of the selected area is selected and you hit your 'delete' key;  You will see a very fine line around the image from the 'Anti-aliasing'. You can correct this while it is still in the very large size by unchecking the anti-alising, use 'Selection' menu, choose 'Modify/Expand', set number of pixels to '1' and then click 'OK', then hit the delete key one last time; invert the selection again so that the part you are wanting is once again selected  then using the 'Image' menu, select 'crop to selection' to get this image  and NO, you aren't done yet.

12.  The selection is nice and clean if you took the time to be precise, but not ready to tube.   The image has to be web ready but this image is ready only for printing resolution.  Saving at this point would leave the image of the size to printout, but not give you the smoothness which is perfection for your tube.  Let's continue!

13.  **Notice that the sizes in these pics relate only to the original image I started with and are for reference only - use the sizes you see in your 'Resize' window!**  Next we ready the image for use as a tube by using the 'Image' menu and selecting 'Resize'.  You will notice that the image is still in the scanned in 300 dpi resolution , at this point make notice of the 'width' size of the image - in this case, 3.146 inches.  Here is where the version of PSP you are using might create an extra step - in version 6, when you change the resolution, which is the next step, it also changes the size accordingly so you need to select the resolution and set it to '72'  - the width changes also so you can set the resolution and click on 'OK' whereas, if you are using version 7 - you will need to make an extra step - after setting the resolution to '72' , also set the width back to the size it was before changing the resolution (in this tutorial, it was 3.146 inches but in the image you use, it will be whatever the width was before you changed the resolution), then click 'OK'.  IF YOU FAIL TO COMPLETE THIS STEP, YOU WILL HAVE A VERY POOR IMAGE AS THE TEXTURE OF THE PAPER IS SHOWING THROUGH AND FADING THE BRILLANCE OF THE IMAGE YOU ARE TRYING TO GET!   THIS IS YOUR CHOICE, 'QUALITY' OR 'SIZE'!  I CHOOSE 'QUALITY' EVERY TIME!

14.  Okay, NOW you are done.  You can save the image to psp format with 'options' set to 'save as PSP5 format' in order to post for others to use or you can save in the version format you are using if you want to prevent others from using it in an earlier version;  or you can use the 'File' menu to 'Export' ' as a picture tube' and tube it!

Once you've practiced this technique several times, you might be filled with the desire to 'REclean' some of the tubes you've downloaded or cleaned prior to this time.  It's not easy once they are resize to a smaller, usable size but I finally found a way to make it work.  REclean Tutorial

     Now, believe it or not, I got so involved in writing this tutorial that I forgot to save the psp format or tube it so I get to go back and do it all over again!  So, if it's a big graphic or small and taking a lot of time to clean - save it now and then while you're cleaning it  in PSP format so you don't end up starting over.
 
 
Zipped tutorial in pdf format is a 576KB download.