The Hard Way: Eliza's Necklace

I don't care for removing things from their backgrounds, as I'm sure I previously mentioned.
This is what you'd call the worst case scenario.
There are endless varieties of ways to separate one object from another. There is Hue, Saturation, and Brightness - at least one of these varies in some degree between separate objects. The other 1% of the time, usually the location or the size/shape/texture varies enough.

This time it was medium grays on medium grays... yuck... what a nightmare. I learned something, though - If you keep a steady hand, a layer mask can be fine tuned. Apparently different brushes on a layer mask and a careful stroking of it can get you what you're looking for no matter what. That's a big confidence booster: it proves that anything can be removed from anything. It did take a few hours, though - but probably half that time was spent searching for and attempting other things - and failing.

It's pretty, isn't it? Eliza sent it to me from her phone. Maybe my work's not perfect, but good enough for a source image, and I can always touch it up.