Erasing with Paint Shop Pro
Erasing the background from your photo and replacing it with a white background for clean product display is quite easy. It's not actual "erasing", although that's what many people call it. Basically it's selecting your product image from your photo, and replacing the background with a layer of white. An important thing to keep in mind when taking photos of your products, is to try your best to keep a solid color background behind your product. Also, make sure you have adequate lighting, and again KNOW YOUR CAMERA. Read that manual, I know it's boring, but it's important. The initial background erasing should be done on the photo directly from your camera, so it's going to be quite large. This will enable you to zoom in and get clear, clean edges around your product image instead of blurry, jagged edges.
Erasing your Background
Ok, the first thing you need to do is open your photo (if it doesn't open at 100% size, click on View-->Zoom to 100%, and then maximize it (at the top of your open file you will see a line, a box, and an X. Click on the box). Then select the Freehand Selection Tool in your Toolbar. If your Tools window isn't open, at the top go to View-->Toolbars-->Tools and it will open up. In the Feather box add 1.
I know that most of you aren't going to be selling butterflies pinned to styrofoam, but this photo is a good example of having a relatively solid color background. What you need to do is mouseover your photo, and move the cursor over your photo until you get to the edge of your product image. Click your mouse once, and then move the cursor to the next spot on the edge of your product image and click again. A line will follow in the path that you've clicked on, and will become the edge of your product image. For straight edges, you can put a larger distance between your clicks, but for curved edges, you are going to want to have short distances between where you click on the edge so that you don't have jagged edges on your finished product. Be careful not to double click around the edges, as that will close your selection and you'll have to start over. Once you've gone all the way around your image and the ends of your selection meet, double click. A line of "marching ants" will now appear around the area that you have selected.
For the next step, go to Selections at the very top, and click on Invert. Your "marching ants" will no appear around the opposite of what you have selected in your image.
For the next step, you need to pick the background color that you want your image to appear on. Most often you are going to want just plain white, although some may prefer a different color. In your color window, make sure that the background color you want is selected. See the example above, I have white set as the background color.
Next, just click the delete button on your keyboard and the offending background will be replaced with your background color. Then go up to Selections, and click Select None, and the "marching ants" will disapper. Then you can just save your image!