For this Photoshop tutorial, we're going to take a look at how to remove a white background from your image.
Now we're going to start off with something simple
So let's say you've got yourself a logo or some text with a white background that you want to remove.
The most basic and simple tool to use is...
Definitely the Magic Wand Tool.
Now this is the fourth tool down.
And you want to right click if you can't see it and it will be this one right here.
This one allows you to left click once and then this will pretty much select the...
Colour that you clicked on.
And once you've got it selected you would then
Right click on your layer.
And make sure it's a Rasterize layer.
And then you just simply press DELETE.
And then that will delete the background.
And then of course you would, left click on this one
Delete.
On that one as well and then finally for the very last one
Press DELETE.
Now this tool is great but it has it's limitations, so let's say for example we have an image like this
Where
You have...
The image
Which also contain's a lot of white colour.
This is going to try it's best
So as you can see it has tried but it also has selected everything else which is what we don't want it to do.
And if we were going to try to let's say
Create a mask.
And invert it, so CTRL + I
You can see that it's transparent
Inside of where we don't want it to be transparent.
The other two options
The other two tools that are good for removing a white background and the ones that can save you time.
Is definitely the newest one which is the Object Selection Tool.
But if you don't have a newer version of Photoshop, so let's say you don't have
Photoshop 2020.
Then you can always use the Quick Selection Tool.
That does the job just as well.
With this one i'ts pretty simple, you've got yourself the square brackets to make it smaller or larger.
And then you've got yourself a NEW selection, a ADD and a SUBTRACT.
And all you have to do is left click and then drag it out and this will start to select the
Background.
As you can see some areas won't be perfect and that's when you would hold ALT or OPTION key
And then take it away from here.
As you can see we can keep on
Re-adjusting it until it does a better job.
So at the moment it isn't looking too bad.
Another key to this is as well, if you make the
Brush size a lot smaller it is going to be more accurate.
So we can
Do this
Right here.
If you wanted to, you can hold ALT or OPTION key and then scroll up to zoom in.
Now we're going to pretty much
Select
This bit right here.
And then of course we've got to also do this bit right here.
Another shortcut is you can hold ALT or OPTION key and make it smaller.
And then select this area right here.
And once you're happy with everything you can then go ahead and create yourself a mask.
But a lot of the time it may do this and it's pretty simple to
Fix this all you got to do is press CTRL + I
And then that
Will invert it.
Now if yours
Is the opposite and it does this instead
This is the colour so you pretty much want to make sure that you don't invert the colour
And you actually select the mask itself and then that will invert it.
So CTRL + I to
Swap it over.
Let's take it one step further and let's say we've got ourself a person.
Let's say we've
Just got some pictures from a photoshoot.
And we need to change the colour of the background or just remove it completely.
With this one I highly recommend the new tool
Which is the Object Selection Tool.
So if we left click and then drag it out and select the person
It will do a really good job on selecting the person.
If yours doesn't, then that's fine you can always re-edit the points. Let's say you can add on to here.
If you wanted to re-adjust it
And you can also use the Polygonal Lasso Tool which is the third tool down.
And the middle one.
And with this one
All you have to do is left click
And then add yourself
An extra line on top of it. Let's say you wanted to create this.
Then you would hold CTRL or COMMAND and then connect it up.
And as you can see that has connected it up.
To do the opposite , it would be you hold ALT or OPTION key.
And then take it away from here.
Once again hold CTRL or COMMAND and then connect it up from here.
And then once you've got yourself the selection, what you would do next is you would go to the second tool
Or you can
Have the Object Selection Tool.
You will see this button right here which will say "Select and Mask".
So you can either do it in there or here.
And once you've pressed that button
It will pretty much
Remove the background.
Now what you can do in here is you can refine some of the areas so for example
We can use the Refine Brush Tool.
And we can fix up some areas for example the hair right here.
We can
Make it look a lot better and remove the background from here
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We can also do it here.
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And just make it look a lot better.
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Right there as well.
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And then once you're happy with everything you can scroll to the bottom where it says "Output To"
And then set this one to "New Layer With Layer Mask" and then press OK.
And then once you've done that
If you wanted to you can get yourself a background by going to the half circle
Half filled circle then go to "Solid Colour".
And then get yourself a colour and then move this underneath
Your selection.
And as you can see
It looks really good.
And if you wanted to you can always click on this one
And always change the colour
To anything that you want it to be.
Now let's say you don't have the newer version of Photoshop and you have the Quick Selection Tool instead.
You would do the same thing
And once again you would hold ALT and then drag the right side of the mouse out.
You would select the person.
Make sure the edges are all in.
And then once again you can go to the same option.
The "Select and Mask" right here.
Right at the top.
And then once again
Go to the second tool.
You can zoom in with the zoom tool which is right here.
And then remove the areas from here.
And then once again, once you're happy with everything
Go all the way to the bottom
And then of course "Output To"
Select the "New Layer With Layer Mask".
And then press OK.
Now sometimes you will reach problems like this where it looks a little bit like this
And that's completely fine.
What you can do is press CTRL + J
To get yourself another layer on top of that one and then that will fill it in.
So that's how you'll fix that problem right there.
And then all you have to do is combine those two together so hold SHIFT
And then click on the bottom one and then right click on it and cover to smart object.
And if we get our self a new solid
And then drag this one underneath.
You can see
Everything is looking good.
Now sometimes
You have problems like this
Now what you can do to fix this is you can create yourself a new layer
And then in that layer
What you can do is, you can get yourself the brush tool.
Get yourself a black colour or
You can copy the colour of the hair.
So for example we're working with this sort of colour.
And then you can hold CTRL
And then click on the thumbnail to select it.
And then pretty much
Paint on the colour.
To make it more visable.
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It's a lot better on the edges
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Because it makes them more visable.
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We can also do it there as well.
And then press CTRL + D to de-select it.
And that is looking a little bit better.
You're probably wondering, what if I've got an image like this where it's more difficult and it will take a lot of time to do it manually.
There's a little trick you can do for this.
So you need to make sure that you have your adjustments open.
If you don't have them open you can go to Window
And then go down to "Adjustments" which is right there.
And then once you've got your adjustments
You want to open it up.
Yours will probably be in here or a separate panel by itself.
You can snap it on where ever you want.
Make sure you're selecting your main image
And then you want to get yourself the Levels.
And then once you've got yourself the Levels, you pretty much want to play about with the middle slider
Until you get the image to be more darker.
Now you don't want it to be too dark because the darker the image..
The more pixelated the end result will be.
So let's say
About here.
That is a good number
The reason for this is because we want to contrast the image with the background as much as possible.
And then once you've done that.
Select your main layer.
Go to select
And then go to colour range.
In colour range you pretty much want to
Click on the white area
And then make sure fuzziness is on 200.
Selection.
None.
And then press OK.
And then once you've got yourself a selection
You can create yourself a mask.
If yours is like this
You want to press CTRL + I
To invert it or COMMAND + I.
And then as you can see the background is now gone.
If you wanted to you can hide this one
And just to give you a little preview
With a solid colour.
So it's not looking too bad at the moment it's a little bit transparent
But that's easily
Fixable
You can just press CTRL + J.
To duplicate it a few times.
And then that will make it more solid.
And this is what I mean by the pixelated area
If you increase the levels too high
It will be more visible with these areas.
And now all you can do is hold SHIFT
Click on the bottom one.
Convert those into a smart object.
Right click on it and "Rasterize Layer".
And then you just pretty much
Fix up the areas by using the eraser tool.
And going around those
Areas.
You can also use the Background Eraser tool.
And this one is a lot better for removing things like this.
As you can see.
It's a lot quicker.
You pretty much want to have tolerance on 20%
Contiguous and then this one right here.
And just..
Go around the image.
And that's pretty much it.
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