How do you get rid of that ugly background on a picture so it’s just white?
Well this one is a toughy that I am by no way an expert at. I’ve read many different techniques to getting rid of backgrounds, and many of them are much more precise than this one, but I find this technique fairly quick and painless.
First open up your photo in PHOTOSHOP.
Next make sure the image is not the background layer. The easiest way to do this is go over to your layers and Double Click on the background layer. A new window will open to make a new layer. You can rename it or just leave it as is and click OK.
Once you’ve unlocked the layer, select the MAGNETIC LASSO TOOL from the toolbar. It’s hidden behind the LASSO TOOL. Now click somewhere on the edge of the image that you want to cut out, and follow along the outline. You do not have to click again after the initial click, it will find its own way to the outline.
Upon circling the item you’re cropping out, you have to click your mouse on the same spot where you started the trace. A tiny empty circle will show up beside your mouse icon to tell you that you linking the finish dot with the start dot.
Beneath the colour buttons on the Tool Bar, you will see two boxes with dotted circles inside them. The one that is usually active is the EDIT IN STANDARD MODE. You want to click EDIT IN QUICK MASK MODE. There should now be a redish colour over all of the background, while the rest looks the same as usual.
Now select your PAINTBRUSH tool and paint in any part of the image you want to be white that isn’t currently red. I used a hard edge sized 50 brush for this.
Now select your eraser and erase any area of red that may be cutting into the photo. Again I used a hard edge sized 50 for the erasing. Remember if you go to far either way, you can just refill or erase that area.
Now return to EDIT IN STANDARD MODE. Go up to EDIT – COPY.
OPEN a new document. This should automatically choose the appropriate size for your copied image. Now PASTE the images into the new document. Tada! You have your image with no background.
There are tricks to making the edges smoother, one of which is to change the feather radius before you COPY and PASTE. Another is to go around the edge with a SOFT ROUND BRUSH. But unless you have a lot of time or need professional quality, this is not really necessary.
Just so you know, I probably wont have any post this weekend, and this will probably be the norm. I hope I’m not dissapointing anyone. Have a good weekend!
