Improving efficiency of image preparation for web

We have ongoing work that involves photographing products such as basketball nets and then preparing the images for the web.

We photograph most products in front of a light gray background and then we photoshop the background out and replace it with a solid color which is normally white.

I don't think we can take a photograph on a white background and go straight to the web so I am wondering if there are techniques used to create an easily replaced background that would save us a lot of busy work. Would this be a case where a green screen or something like it would work well??

 

why is using a white background out of the question?
lets say that you change the background to white 50% of the time. if you start with a white background, then you just cut your work load in half... am I missing something?

 

White is close to the color of much of the products we shoot. I am primarily a developer and only have advanced cropping and resizing skills in Photoshop. I see our graphics people using a function in Photoshop that allows them to crop out irregular shapes but I think there is a much more effective way to accomplish the task. I've seen some demos where green or blue backgrounds are used and the magic wand is adjusted and used to quickly trim around a single object. I just need to find a good way to do netting. Any ways, I white backgrounds may be hard to cut away from white products.

 

I LOVE the magic wand lasso tool in Photoshop...works miracles for me.