How to Make a Transparent Background in Photoshop – 3 Really Easy Tips

In this video, I show you how to make a transparent background in Photoshop. It’s extremely easy to do, and you can do it, even if you are a beginner at Photoshop. I use 3 different images as examples and show you the process for making a selection, and deleting the background to make it transparent. This is useful for many different things, including changing the background of an image, composites, and more. Knowing how to make a transparent background in Photoshop is essential.

How to Make a Transparent Background in Photoshop

In this first tip for making background transparent in Photoshop, we’re going to use this Twitter logo image. Make sure that the background layer is unlocked. You can click on the lock and it will unlock it, or you can just create a new copy of that background layer, Command+J. And since we have a logo here that has a lot of contrast between the background, we’re going to have Photoshop do all the work for us here.

So if you come to Window and come down to properties and there’s a button here that says remove background. So click that. And with one-click Photoshop cut out that logo and it made its own layer mask. If you turn off the background layer you can see the transparency. If this were a more complex logo, you could use the mask to refine the selection.

Now we need to save this logo in PNG format. PNG is one of the best file formats that supports transparency. Now we’re going to come here to file-> export->export as. Up here where it says file settings format. Be sure PNG is selected and transparency is checked. If you want to change your image size, you can do that here also, but we’re going to export it and save it. Now I want to use my newly created logo that is transparent and fit it right in the middle of this screen right here.

So now I’m just going to drag my logo onto Photoshop and hit the checkmark. So if I move this over I see that the logo on the cell phone is actually white. So we look at the thumbnail right here where the Twitter logo is. It’s a smart object and if you double click on it here, you can edit the smart object.

I’m going to come up here to Edit-> Fill and fill contents with white say OK, I’m going to close my smart object and I’m going to save it and now I can transform my logo with command+T and bring it down to the size where it looks good and kind of replaces the logo that was there, and hit the checkmark. So that’s how we were able to make a transparent background on the logo. And export it as a PNG. I’ve got two more tips for you.

How to Make a Transparent Background for an Image with a Layer Mask.

So in this example we’re going to use the select subject tool in Photoshop. Here at the top is the Select Subject button, we’ll click that and Photoshop does its best to make a selection. I’m going to use the quick selection tool and take care of 1 little area here. I’m going to come down to the bottom of the layers panel and hit the add layer mask icon and now notice from the use of a layer mask you have a transparent background now.

And if I want to refine this mask. And double click on the layer mask. And hit the select and mask button and I can use the transparency slider here to see a little bit more of the background and actually Photoshop did a good job. If I need to do more I could use the Refine Edge tool and maybe just go around the outside of the hair and then I’m going to slide down to the bottom here where it says output two. I’m going to output it to that same layer mask. I’m going to say OK,

I’m going to add a new blank layer on top of our layer zero. I’m going to hold alt or option and clip it to the layer below what this is going to do, it’s going to allow me to do any kind of retouching that I need to go further on this image. But I’m not going to go further. I added that extra layer to show you this example.

So now let’s say we want to use this image for a composite. We got this model cut out of the white background, background, transparent. Now we want to put this image into another image as part of a composite. So now I’m going to come here to file save as save on your computer and I have all these formats that I could save my document in so I could save it in PNG because it supports transparency.

Also, JPEG 2000 supports transparency now JPEG JPEG 2000, but it’s not used that much. Photoshop documents also supports transparency, but then that document is only for use in Photoshop, TIFF also supports transparency, so I’m going to select TIFF and say save IF the tip options come up I’m going to say OK.

And here’s the image that I want to work with. I’m going to make a copy of the Background Layer Command+J. And I want to flip it beacuse the windows on the other side, so I’m going to say command+T, right click and say flip horizontal and now I’m going to get my image with the model that’s already cut out and has transparency. I’m going to bring it into this image or drag it in. And I’ll leave it there and hit the check mark.

But as you can see, a TIFF file supports transparency along with the PNG file and something else to note when you just drag an image into Photoshop like that, it comes in as a smart object. If you double click on it, this smart object opens up and there are all the layers so the extra layer that I added is there and the layer masks if I want to refine the selection I can do that right here. I could do more editing and then I could save my smart object so the TIFF format also supports transparency.

How to Make a Transparent Background for a Text Layer

Tip #3 we’re going to work with text. So create a new document File->New and I’m going to choose a custom size of 1280 x 720. I want a white background and I’m going to say create. This new document that we’ve created is going to have a text layer on it.

What I want to do with that text layer I want to be able to use that text layer on any image that I want. I’m going to come down here to my text tool and I’m going to type the word SUMMER. Hit my check box up here. I’ll move it over just a little bit. This time I’m going to use the object selection tool and draw a rectangle around the word summer. All the letters are selected. Then at the bottom of the layers panel I’m going to hit the Add Layer Mask. And when I turn off the background I have a text layer that has transparency.

Before I save this as a PNG file, I think I want to change the color of the font to white. So I’m going to highlight my text and come up here and change my color to white. Click the checkmark a little bit hard to see, but now I’m going to save it as a PNG.

I’m going to come up here to file export, export as, my format is PNG you can see that there’s transparency, but make sure that the transparency is checked. I’m not going to change the size I’m going to export and choose where to save it on my desktop and say save. Here’s the image where I want to add my PNG file to. Here’s my PNG file. Drag it over to my document. Comes in as a smart object so I can pull these handles, position it to where I want, and say OK.

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See my previous blog article here 👉 https://charlescabrera.com/how-to-crop-an-image-in-photoshop-2-minute-tip/