Here is a sort of a list of what exists. Intelligent scissors is a tool that PhotoShop has. It has what is called magnetic lasso on which help, you can choose or select these things. Image snapping is another tool, ice is another which lets you do the selection and elimination using line drawing representation of the objects, and then finally selection using multiscale segmentation which is what we will be talking about today as the state of the art tool.
A second part of this selection process involves alpha channel, where alpha channel refers to the optical interaction between objects.