I looooove the pen tool. Mainly because I like the firm smoothness of the edge. And it's nearly impossible to make a shitty cut-out with this tool (IF you use it right, that is). I'll try to explain it as best I can. But if you master this tool, it will be your best friend as far as making cutouts go. The beauty of the pen tool is you can click and drag and create anchor points, but they don't have to just be straight lines. You can make beautiful smooth curves.
1) First, open your PATHS (Window >Paths) and then select the pen tool (P).
*I suggest practicing on a blank canvas beforehand to get the hang of this*
2) Now make your first point. Anywhere is fine. Hold the mouse down with one click, then release and click to create a second point point a little bit further away (DON'T UN-CLICK). Now (without un-clicking) drag the mouse. This will give you some handle bars and will start curving the line you just made. Experiment and drag the mouse until the line of the pen matches the line of the object. Once it does, you can release the mouse.
3) Now, at most points you can just keep going and click to make your next point. But depending on how far you had to drag and how long your handlebars have gotten, you might want to hold the OPTION key down and click the last anchor point you made to delete the handlebar. This keeps the line from going all wonky (especially when you are going around sharper corners [like the points on the hat]).
I'm sorry if i'm just confusing the mess out of you. But if you click around a little bit and make some practice lines first, you will see what i'm talking about. As always, if you make a line you don't like and want to re-do it, just press Command+Z (go back a move) and try again.
4) Once your selection is done it will just be the pen tool line (no marching ants yet). To actually create the selection ants, you need to go to your PATHS window that you opened earlier and click the 'load path as selection' button:
4) Clicking this button will create the selection. (I don't know what the default is, but in my PS this button selects the INVERSE of everything I selected. So just go to Select } Inverse and it will flip). From here, you can duplicate (Command+J) the selection and it will go to a new layer and VOILA, you are done. You can, as always, erase any part of the selection you don't want at this point. I find that this tool gives me the best consistency of line and looks the nicest. It takes some practice though.
Okay, now that i've thoroughly bored you to death i'm finally finished! I hope this was kinda sorta helpful. :)
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