What is the best way to crop out a picture of my Tori for art purposes? Every time I try, I get jagged edges and the last thing I want to do is blur them out and compromise the quality of the textures.

I'm using Gimp, so can any fellow artists give a little insight?

Pretty much the best process for getting clean cropping is using the paths tool to select the area around the tori and then deleted the parts you don't want.

I sometimes use a custom shader that makes the background completely white, so all i have to do is select the area and delete it, which makes things pretty easy, but doesn't always work.

Your best bet is the first thing i said. If you get jagged edges use the eraser tool with a soft brush to smooth them out.

well like jusmi said i do that always too for my previews simply add alpha channel and delete what i dont need and after all i select whats left shrink the selection by 1 and then press CRTL+X this cuts the while or wrong outside for me out