How do i make selections?

Hello to all!
Im a newbie at photoshop and have been struggling with making selections - could some one tell me which is the best way to do the same?

The pictures are
1. Person against a cluttered background
2. Person against a plain background - here, while magic wand does a decent job, there are bits of the backgnd that i can see through the models hair and i just dont know how to remove that other than going down to the pixel level!

If it helps im using PS CS2 on D70 RAW files!

Any general advice on making selections would be most appreciated!!

Thanks a million!
Kunal

Get this book and don't look back. Seriously. I think it assumes some knowledge of photoshop tools already. But this is the best I've seen so far.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846

There are no magic tricks or tools, only techniques.

Try using the quick mask mode to draw the selection you want. http://www.arraich.com/ref/aatool_quick_mask6.htm

This is slow, but i think there is no quick and good method for doing that.

Why do you need to select exactly the person? If it's to make the background softer, then take the picture with less depth of field, and that way it wouldn't be necessary to select the person perfectly to apply the blur.
If it's to replace the background, just take the picture against an uniform colored background.
A little planning before taking the picture could be more efficient and good looking than hours of photoshop editing.