I've done a lot of this work in the past and tried enough different methods to be sure that there is no quick way to do it that gives good results. You can have either quick or good, but not both together. I'd love to be proven wrong on this as I imagine I'll have to do a lot more of this work in future.

Here are the three main methods I use:

• Manually cut out the subject (with the pen tool, lasso etc.), fill the outside area with white. This is the most time consuming but provides the best results. Works best with head/torso shots as if you're working on a full length shot this method removes shadows which prevent the subject being grounded (they look like they're floating in the air). Hair is very problematic so I often rely on the below method for the hair.

• Blowing out the background, i.e increasing brightness contrast until the background goes pure white. This can be done globally if you're lucky, but most of the time the background brightness will shift across your image (due to shadows / light falloff), so the amount of brightening to blow it out will vary. I work around the subject with a selection along the edge of the subject, fading out gently into the subject, and adjust the curves until the background goes white locally, then move the selection on to the next part of the edge. Downsides of this method are that it is still time consuming, can produce artifacts / colour shifts in the edges of the subject, and it only works if the background is fairly bright / even to begin with. Also it can't handle shadows.

• Blurring the background. Blurring evens out creases well, and copes with shadows and changes in background brightness. The problem with this method is you can't get too close to your subject(s) without blurring them, so you can blur the large areas but then you often need to do some manual fixing around the edges of the subjects using the above methods.