Making an object with a transparent background

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Making an object with a transparent background

I am wondering if you could explain how you make the assets with transparent backgrounds? For example, I have a black and white photo of my daughters footprints that I want to 'omit' the white part and be able to drop just the footprints on a page. In Microsoft Publisher they have a "Set Transparent Color" tool where you simple click on what color you want to omit. Is there any feature like this in Photoshop?

It's hard to know exactly wich way that will works best cause it all depends on the photo smiley But open a new file and set that to transparent smiley Import your picture to it and then it begins smiley

This could work: LINK

Ok-I'm the definition of 'beginner' with Photoshop smiley I think I've figured out how to make the background transparent, and then I put my photo on as a 2nd layer and used the magic eraser to omit the background colors from that layer, keeping only what I want. My problem arises when I try to save it and place it on my page. It shows up with either a black or a white box around it. I don't know how to save it so that goes away.

Save it as .png smiley The backround on your picture should be all grey/white chequered befor you save it smiley

It worked! Another online tutorial I was looking at said to save it as a GIF file-clearly that wasn't working! Thank you so much for your help Jessica!

Oh great smiley I'm just happy to help smiley

Thanks for the tip - am a beginner in Photoshop - have just trie - and it works!

Have you considered creating a layer mask? You select the object, click on the layer mask icon and it removes the back ground. The advantage over the removal of the background over using the eraser tool is that you can refine the selected area.

A Hint when removing something. Duplicate the layer. Hide the original layer. This way if it does not turn out the way you want you can duplicate the layer again and start again.

Thanks for the advice Judy!
I am so much of a beginner with photoshop that I don't even understand what you are explaining! smiley lol! But I am eagerly trying to learn and figure out how to use it! Every little piece of advice will help along the way!

You might try using the magic eraser tool. It is hidden under the regular eraser, it's the bottom one, the eraser with the star over it. Sometimes you get really lucky and it removes all the background in one click and other times you have to click a few times or increase/decrease the tolerance (which is located on the upper tool bar). I use it all the time with good results. If it gets messy, you might try converting the image to a true black and white (Image>Adjustments>Black&White) to give Photoshop a more crisp edge in determining what to cut and what to leave.

I also put a layer under the original image of a vivid color so that as I begin extracting the background I can easily see any stray pixels that remain in the background that need to be erased.

Good luck!

Edited to add: Also, after you remove the background pixels, if you put a stroke around it, it will really show up the stray pixels. Then you an go back and removed the stroke after you get things cleaned up. I'm always surprised when I add the stroke how many strays there were that I couldn't see.

That's some great advice Tina. The first time I tried this I did have quite a few of those stray pixels when I put my picture on my page! I had to go back and erase them but it was really hard to see if I had them all- I will definitely try your ideas next time smiley thanks for the tutorial links Judy- I look forward to watching them! This may be a dumb question but I have a PC not a Mac, will these instructions be quite a bit different for me? Sometimes I can't even find the buttons these tutorials are talking about- perhaps because they are intended for PS Mac?

If you zoom into your work area before starting it does make it easier to she what you are erasing.