Filters

Several filters come built in with your photoshop software, including effects to make your photo look like a sketch, a cartoon, blurred, texturized, etc. I like to use these for my backgrounds.

So I use the selection brush to select the foreground. Of course, I magnify the image, so I can get every little pixel. Then I invert the selection, so the background is selected, then I apply my desired filter. This pic is using a film grain filter

and this one is using a stained glass filter.