How do I make a jpeg image white background transparent?

How do I make a jpeg image white background transparent?

As this thread started in the Photoshop forum of this site (where Google search brought me), I am re-posting it here... to make everyone HAPPY :)
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Fantastic, SPEEDY reply, THANX! However...

I am a raw beginner with Illustrator CS4 (as many visiting this forum may be), so when you reply :

"Using Illustrator's drawing tools, create a vector mask and mask the image." I am already lost :-(

You assume I already have those skills [I DON'T :-)]

My goal was to get an answer like this:

Step 1 - Select This tool =
Step 2 - Click here
Step 3 - Now select this tool =
Step 4 - Do this to change the white to a transparent background =

Now that you have the image separated from the background (or the color white replaced by "transparency"), and now that it is residing on a TRANSPARENT background (workspace canvas),

Step 5 - Do this to select only the image (Not the full canvas) =
Step 6 - Do File - Export - Select .PNG and make sure the TRANSPARENCY option is set.

If you can fill-in the missing pieces of information in the Step By Step format above, it would GREATLY help me and hopefully, many others!

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Quote Originally Posted by gwpriester View Post
Using Illustrator's drawing tools, create a vector mask and mask the image.

Or if you need to drop out a single color or variations of that color, use the Mehdi Eraser Genuine filter. You can download it for free.
And JPEG images do not support transparency. So even if you drop out part of the image, the transparency cannot be saved in a JPEG image.
You can create a TIFF or PNG with Alpha channel transparency of your edited image.