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About this lesson
Learn how the Blend If function in your layers styles can make short work of removing backgrounds from an image.
Exercise files
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Quick reference
Topic
Learn how the Blend If function in your layers styles can make short work of removing backgrounds from an image.
When to use
As a lot of stock images use solid dark or white backgrounds, this tutorial show you how to remove the backgrounds easily while still retaining the color tones and the ability to paint mattes straight on.
Instructions
Load the images you want to merge
- Open up the two images in Photoshop
- With the move tool drag one image to the tab of the 2nd and hold until 2nd image opens up and drop the new image in
- Place image that you want to blend on top
Blend If (Darker background)
- Double click on the layer to bring up the Layer styles
- Bring up Blending options:
- In the Blend If section, drag left slider of the ‘This Layer’ to the right a little.
- Then Hold Alt and separate slider to soften the blend Layer style settings
Blend If (Brighter background)
- Double click on the layer to bring up the Layer styles
- Bring up Blending options:
- In the Blend If section, drag the right slider of the ‘This Layer’ to the left.
- Then Hold Alt and separate slider to soften the blend Layer style settings
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- 00:04 A lot of times, when you download a text from the internet, whether it's from Google
- 00:08 or from Shutterstock, you're going to find that the background is either solid
- 00:11 white or solid black.
- 00:12 This is usually done to give a nice contrast
- 00:16 between the background and the subject in the foreground.
- 00:19 In this case, there's fire at the top and the bottom, and the background is solid
- 00:23 black.
- 00:24 Now the question is, how do you get rid of this background
- 00:27 if you want to composite the texture onto a photo,
- 00:31 like this one over here in the background? Now, of course, like everything
- 00:34 in Photoshop, there are a lot of ways
- 00:36 of doing it, but I can show you a fairly simple way that should work on most of
- 00:40 the textures that you downloaded from the Internet. The way a lot of people
- 00:44 suggest doing is to simply go over to the blend modes in your Layers panel
- 00:47 and then choose Screen, which is supposed to take out the black in the photo.
- 00:51 And in this case, it doesn't look too bad, but if I undo
- 00:55 and then redo, it lost a little bit if its color, and you really have no control
- 00:59 over the final result in the blending.
- 01:02 So for some photos this may work well, but for others it may not work as
- 01:06 expected.
- 01:06 So I can undo, Command or Control ‘Z’ one more time, and this time we want to hop
- 01:11 into our layer styles.
- 01:12 So I'm going to double-click on this texture photo in my layers panel
- 01:15 to bring up the layer style dialogue box. And you want to direct your attention
- 01:19 towards the bottom
- 01:20 of this blending option section, which is Blend If.
- 01:23 Blend If will allow you to blend out the shadows or the highlights
- 01:27 in this layer, which is the layer that you're currently on: or the
- 01:31 underlying layer, and that's done using the sliders at the left and the right.
- 01:35 The shadows are on the left, the highlights are on the right. Now, because you want to
- 01:39 blend out
- 01:39 the current layer, the one that we have selected we're going to just use the top
- 01:42 sliders.
- 01:43 Now, if I was simply to grab the top slider and drag it to the right, you're going to notice
- 01:47 the black is certainly disappearing,
- 01:49 but the edges of the texture are becoming very harsh and sharp,
- 01:52 which you probably don't want. So let me go ahead and put it back to
- 01:56 the left.
- 01:57 Now, this time if you look really closely, I'm going to zoom in here on the screen,
- 02:01 you may notice that this slider is actually composed of two halves.
- 02:04 And this will allow you to split the slider up,
- 02:08 which will transition the blending a lot cleaner.
- 02:11 That's done by holding down your ALT or Option key,
- 02:15 Option on the Mac, ALT on Windows, and dragging the right-side of the slider to the right.
- 02:19 Now, this time you'll notice the blending is a lot smoother
- 02:24 than it was before.
- 02:25 And if I simply keep going to the right, more and more black will disappear
- 02:29 from the photo.
- 02:29 So I can keep going if I want a little bit more transparency, or drag it a
- 02:33 little bit back to the left
- 02:34 to keep some black color in the photo. And unlike before,
- 02:38 which took a lot of the color out of the photo and left the texture pretty
- 02:41 transparent,
- 02:42 we now have a nice, vibrant texture with a little better transparency,
- 02:46 that we can control using the blend if sliders.
- 02:49 And pressing OK will apply that affect directly to the photo.
- 02:53 And we can see our final result. So just to compare, let me hop over to my history
- 02:57 panel,
- 02:58 go to window and then down to history and duplicate this document.
- 03:01 And on this one, I'll get rid of the Blend If, and I'll simply switch over to the
- 03:06 screen blending mode.
- 03:08 So this is what it would look like with the screen blending mode applied.
- 03:11 And this is what it looks like with blend if mode. Some of you may like this
- 03:15 look because it’s a little bit more transparent than the blend if method.
- 03:17 But if you're looking to keep the color and the
- 03:20 transparency, especially over top of the model,
- 03:23 then you may want to take a look at Blend If. Now, in this case, I would probably
- 03:26 increase the Blend If a little bit more to add a little bit more transparency,
- 03:30 especially in this
- 03:31 area here, around her forehead, but for the most part,
- 03:34 I love the vibrancy, love the texture, outside the model.
- 03:37 Where as, if we go back to this photo, it's a little bit bland
- 03:40 and a little bit too transparent for my liking. And again, using blend if gives
- 03:44 you complete control, so you can
- 03:46 always double click and adjust the Blend If sliders if you need to,
- 03:50 you can always adjust the overall opacity of your texture if you like.
- 03:54 So that's the first example of getting rid of a black background.
- 03:57 Now, what about a white background? Well luckily it works almost the same.
- 04:01 So in this photo here, we have an object
- 04:04 sitting on a completely white background. Now in many cases, you can simply go to
- 04:08 the blend modes
- 04:09 and choose Multiply, which is supposed to get rid of the white background.
- 04:13 And it did, but it also left the subject a little bit transparent.
- 04:16 So again, I'll undo - Command or Control ‘Z’, and double click on the layer in the
- 04:20 Layers panel to bring up my blending options.
- 04:23 I'll zoom in a little bit and move it over to the left.
- 04:26 And just like on the last example, we're going to go down to the Blend If section.
- 04:30 But this time, instead of blending out the shadows, we're going to be blending out the
- 04:33 highlights.
- 04:34 So I can hold on my ALT or Option key and simply drag to the left. You’re going to notice
- 04:39 the white is starting to disappear. Now if you look closely, you can probably see
- 04:43 that there's a little bit of white
- 04:44 that got removed on the object itself. Now, there's a few things you can do about
- 04:48 this situation. You can either
- 04:49 dial back the Blend If slider, which could bring back some of the white in the
- 04:53 background,
- 04:54 or, here's a little trick you can do. Let's go ahead press OK to accept this,
- 04:59 and what we're going to do is we're going to duplicate this layer - Command or Control ‘J’.
- 05:03 If you look in the Layers panel, we have two layers and on the top layer,
- 05:07 if I get rid of the Blend If
- 05:08 adjustment and press OK, we now have the layer as it was when we started.
- 05:13 At this point, I want to apply a blank layer mask, by holding on ALT or Option
- 05:18 and clicking on the layer mask button at the bottom of my Layers panel.
- 05:21 And I will hide everything on that layer, which will allow me
- 05:24 to brush back in the areas that I want to reveal.
- 05:28 I will press ‘B’ on my keyboard to bring up my brush and make sure that it’s set to
- 05:32 white in my color picker.
- 05:32 I will brush overtop of the areas
- 05:35 that were left a little bit transparent. I can use my left or right square
- 05:39 bracket keys to increase or decrease the size the brush.
- 05:42 And I will simply brush back in those areas, just like that.
- 05:45 Now you're left with your object, without the white background that
- 05:48 it originally had.
- 05:50 So those are two very quick examples of how you can get rid of a black or a
- 05:54 white background
- 05:55 in the photos that you download from the internet Again, either from Google
- 05:59 or from Shutterstock.com. And like I mentioned, in some cases,
- 06:03 selecting screen or multiply may do the trick, but it doesn't give you as much
- 06:07 control as you may want.
- 06:09 Using the Blend If sliders gives you a lot more control over the transparency
- 06:13 of that texture.
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