Removing Backgrounds

Quick reference

• 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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