Introduction
Making transparent background is one of the most basic that every editor should learn if they want to pursue their career in the photo editing industry. It is one of the most sought-after skills that has thousands of different applications. If you learn making transparent backgrounds and become good at it, this will definitely increase and open up a wide range of options that will also help you push yourself in your career.
If we think about learning how to create a transparent background in photoshop, then we will be able to make and place our products with a transparent background. This will give you the extra power on changing the color of the product dynamically. Also, in modern websites, products having a good transparent background will have even better user experience.
One of the most common pictures that have a transparent background is the logo of any website. This is mainly done because we can then place the logo over any background and also at any place on the screen. Adobe Photoshop is a reliable piece of software that is going to help you make transparent backgrounds of different products and will also saves a lot of time by making the images ready for website.
This is a very easy thing to do once you have already known the software a bit. In this article, we will definitely make get you through the process step-by-step and answer you the question on how to create a transparent background in Photoshop.
How to Create a Transparent Background for a Product image in Photoshop
• Making and Importing the Image into a Layered File
• Creating your Selection from your Image
• Deleting the Background of your Image
• Saving the Image in a Website-friendly Format. • Saving your Image into your computer
Step Number 1: Making and Importing the Image into a Layered File
In the first step, the first thing that you need to do is to open the image of your product in Photoshop. Most of the time, you will see that the file is in JPG format. If you want to practice it, then you can definitely use any image from your computer or get from the Internet, but for doing this, you shouldn’t use the image for any commercial purpose.
After that, open the Layers panel from your window. Normally, this panel will be seen at the right side of your image window. However, if you don’t see the option, don’t worry, you will be able to see it by clicking on the Windows button on the top shelf, and then select the Layers tab from the dropdown menu.
After you have opened the Layers tab, you should double-click on the Background layer and see a New Layer dialogue box that will ask you to rename the layer that you have selected. You can definitely leave this layer as the default Layer 0 and then click OK.
By doing this, you will be able to unlock your background layer. If you delete anything in this layer, you will be able to make it transparent.
Step Number 2: Creating your Selection from your Image
In this step, we will have to select the Magic Wand tool that you will be able to see in the Toolbar menu, which is on the left side of your screen, inside the tool window. After clicking on the Magic Wand, you should click on the Select Subject that you will find on the Options bar at the right side of your screen. This will enable Photoshop to select the object that you want to keep and separate from the background. When you click that, you will be able to see a new outline one the side of your objects and this will look like a lot of ants marching surrounding your object.
If you see that the selection that you have done isn’t perfect, then you can use the Magic Wand again to remove the background that you have selected, or if you want, you can add more parts of the product to the selection, depending on your will.
Please do keep in mind that whenever you are creating a selection, you should make sure that the areas that you have selected have any holes or not. This is mainly because the holes will also have to be removed to make the selection look uniform.
Step Number 3: Deleting the Background of your Image
After you are satisfied with your selection, you then have to select the inverse option and to do that, type SHIFT+CTRL+I (if you are using windows) or SHIFT+COMMAND+I (if you are using Mac), you can even do that manually by choosing Select and then clicking Inverse from the dropdown menu that is at the top of the application window.
After you have selected the inverse (background), click one the BACKSPACE key (Windows) or DELETE key (Mac). You will see that the background has become transparent as this will remove the underlayer of the image. In Photoshop, you will be able to find the background layer by seeing a gray and white checkboard. This represents transparent background in Adobe Photoshop. After that, you should type CTLR+D (Windows) or COMMAND+D (Mac) so that you can deselect your image.
Step Number 4: Saving the Image in a Website-friendly Format
So far, we have only done half of the work. Now we need to make sure that we can save the image in the correct format so that we can place it in our website or in other places as an overlay to use. The best format to save images like this is the PNG-24 format.
This format saves the data of your foreground and the background and hence, this will definitely keep your image from forming a “halo” effect that is usually seen on the pixelated picture once it has been placed on a different colored background. However, if have older transparent file formats like PNG-8 or GIF, then we will have this effect on the image, which is not always desirable. As a result, whenever possible, we should go with PNG-24.
If you want to save the image as PNG-24 in your Photoshop software, you should type SHIFT+ALT+CTRL+W (Windows) or SHIFT+OPTION+COMMAND+W (Mac) or you can manually do that by going to File, Export, Export As … that you will be able to find on the dropdown menu at the top of the application window. When you see a dialogue box after that, you will see the Format option on the right side of the File Setting box.
Set your Format to PNG; make sure the transparency box is checked. Please don’t check the Smaller File (8-bit) option because this will definitely convert the file to PNG-8, which we don’t want. On the left side of the image that you have chosen, you will see that the software has predicted the file size of your PNG format.
You should keep an eye on this because if the size of the file is too big, this will definitely make your web page load slowly and if you ask me, I would say that to keep the web page fast, you should definitely make the image around 200KB or smaller if possible.
Step Number 5: Saving your Image into your Computer
After you are done and happy with your image export settings, click Export All. This will bring a box where you will be able to choose the folder where you will be able to save your location file and where you should save them. If you keep your original files separated from your optimized file, you will be able to avoid confusion when you load your images onto your website. Finally, you should name your image file and do make sure that the extension is .pang. After that, click Save.
FAQ
How do I improve the quality of a scanned image in Photoshop?
You can improve the quality of a scanned image in Photoshop by going to the menu bar, then selecting Image, then Adjustments, and then Brightness/Contrast. After clicking on the brightness setting, you can use the slider to change the overall brightness layer of the image. Also, you can change the overall contrast by working with the contrast slider. After you are satisfied with the preview, click OK and you will see that you have adjusted the quality of the scanned image.
How do I make a JPEG higher resolution?
You can easily improve the overall quality of your JPEG format by fine-tuning the appearance of the image, its color, brightness, and contrast with the help of a photo editor. Among them, Adobe Photoshop is the biggest and the most popular photo editor. However, it isn’t free. If you want to work on a free image editor, you can definitely try Pixlr, or GIMP. You can work on your images and after you have tinkered with the settings, you can save them in a high-quality format.
How do you Increase clarity in Photoshop?
You can easily increase the clarity of the photo that you want to work on in Photoshop. To do this, you first have to select your photo, and then click on the Edit icon that you will find in the right Column. In the Effects panel, you can drag the slider of the Clarity and by sliding it to the right, you will be able to increase the mudstone contrast and the sharpness of the image. On the other hand, if you slide it to the left, it will decrease the overall contrast and the sharpness, which will make the image softer than usual.
Besides this, you can also use the Dehaze slider so that you will be able to reduce the haze, mist, or foggy effect from your photo and this will definitely reveal and increase details and colors that might have been hidden.
Conclusion
Creating transparent background is one of the most fundamental things to do if you want to learn and improve your photo editing skills. I hope you learned how to create transparent background through Photoshop and excel in your career.
If you liked our article, then please do take look at our previous articles where we talked about other related topics and tutorials on different creative things. Also please do let us know if you want to learn about anything else or if you have any questions, then you should definitely ask us in the comments section.
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