Never mind - it took over 3 hours, but I figured it out. 

if you can post an image in the future, it would probably help - since I "silo" images differently depending on what the image is.

for example: A hard edged object with a low contrast background would be handled differently than an image of someone with dark, frizzy hair against a light blue sky.

The first image, I'd use the path tool and make a selection from my path or use the polygon lasso - the second I'd look for the channel with the best contrast, copy it and paste it into an alpha channel, invert it and paint the parts that were inside or outside the channel's borders.

Since lots of folks get to the same desination different ways - I'm sure putting the suggestion out there will get answers that you, me and others probably hadnt even considered!