Adobe Photoshop Background Removal

Keep the foreground, remove the background in Photoshop.

One of the wonders of Photoshop is that it will allow you to take the background out of a photo while the foreground subject matter in the photo remains intact. A number of tools, filters and techniques in Photoshop accomplish this. The trick is knowing which tool works best with which background.

Magic Wand

Think of a maple leaf on a white background. It's a clear, clean image you want to keep, and a high contrast background you want to eliminate. Photoshop lets you do it in a fast, two-step process. With your picture open, use the Magic Wand Tool from the Toolbox to click on the background. You have just cued the moving dots that march around the edges of the image and the borders of your frame. When you hit "Delete" on your computer keyboard, the background will vanish, leaving faded gray and white checks to indicate a transparent background.

Magnetic Lasso

Now think of the maple leaf on a tree limb next to other maple leaves. It's an intricate shape you want to keep, against a background with little or no contrast. The Magic Wand will not be able to tell the difference between the green of one leaf, and the green of another. Instead, you need the Magnetic Lasso Tool that automatically snaps to the points and edges of your leaf as you trace its outline. Photoshop gives you settings for edge detection, degree of contrast and frequency of fastening points when you use the Magnetic Lasso to select the background you want to eliminate. Time to hit "Delete" to see your lonely leaf on a newly transparent background.

Extract Filter

Choose "Extract" from your "Filters" drop-down, and a dialog box opens providing you with a marker to outline the shapes you want to keep. Then you use the Paint Bucket from the Extract Filter dialog box to fill the shape you are keeping. When you click OK, your background will disappear. If the marker was not quite precise, you can use the Eraser Tool in the Toolbox to get rid of any remaining background bits. The Extract filter works well to remove complex backgrounds behind large shapes.

Background Eraser Tool

Think of a person with blonde wispy hair, against a blue background. You cannot trace or outline those wisps with the Magnetic Lasso or the Extract Filter. But you can eliminate the blue background with the Background Eraser Tool hiding beneath your regular Eraser in the Toolbox. This tool lets you sample the background color with a crosshairs icon. Then wherever you place or drag your brush, it automatically erases that background color from your image, completely ignoring everything of a different color. All the blue background goes away, and all the blonde wisps remain without any delicate tracing or erasing on your part.