How to Add Background Effects in Adobe Photoshop

There are many background effects that can be used in Adobe Photoshop to enhance your background. You can change the mode of your background to give it different effects that lighten, darken and otherwise change your background. Using the mode function along with opacity and the brush tool can add some great effects to the background of your Photoshop document.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Adobe Photoshop

1. Start Photoshop. Open an existing image from your files to which to apply background effects. Notice that in your Layers palette, your image is set as your background. In order to be able to make changes to your image, you will need to change the image into a layer.

2. Right-click on the background layer in the Layers palette and click on the "Layer From Background…" option.

3. Name the layer in the "New Layer" dialog box and leave the color as "None."

4. Change the mode to any other setting besides "Normal" and change the "Opacity" setting if you wish. The lower you set the opacity, the more transparent your background will become.

5. Select the foreground color square in your Photoshop toolbox in order to bring up the "Color Picker" dialog box.

6. Click anywhere in your background with your mouse to select a color and click "OK" to close. Your cursor will turn into an eyedropper tool allowing you to pick up whatever color you click on.

7. Select a brush using the Brush tool. Use the brush to add more effects to your background.

Tips & Warnings

• If you don't see your Layers palette, press the F7 key on your keyboard or choose "Layers" from the "Windows" menu.