How to make something have a transparent background in photoshop

There are several tools available in Adobe Photoshop that make use of Adobe Sensei, the platform's artificial intelligence (AI) engine. These tools come in handy for a variety of purposes, including making transparent backgrounds.

In the following tutorials, we will show you how to make a background transparent in Photoshop using a couple of different easy methods.

Why Would You Want to Make a Background Transparent in Photoshop?

To begin, let’s rephrase the question. Because usually, it’s more experienced Photoshop users who know what transparent backgrounds are, and what their uses are for.

In a nutshell, if you’re asking how to make a background transparent in Photoshop, what you’re likely asking is this: "how do I remove a background from my image in Photoshop?" Or perhaps you're wondering, "how do I delete the background from my image in Photoshop?"

Semantics aside, here are a few common reasons why you would want to make a background transparent in Photoshop:

• To remove distracting elements, like other people or objects
• To create an artistic portrait
• To place your subject into a completely different background

Essentially, making a background transparent in Photoshop has everything to do with subject isolation. That’s to say, there’s something wrong with the background in the original image, and you want to delete the background entirely to place emphasis on your subject.

With this core concept in mind, let’s have a look at a couple of different ways you can make a background transparent in Photoshop.

Using the Properties Panel in Photoshop to Remove a Background

This method is the easiest way to remove a background in Photoshop. But it depends on your image. This method works best if you have simple backgrounds where your subject stands out and is clearly defined.

You can download this photo from Pexels and follow along.

1. Once your image is imported into Photoshop, press Ctrl + J to duplicate the layer. Note: If you miss this step, you won’t see the selection options that we go over in step three.

2. Go to Window > Properties.

3. Select Remove Background.

4. To view your transparent background, click the Eye icon to the left of the Background layer.

With your single transparent layer, you’re now free to drop it into another background or create other effects to make your subject stand out.

Placing a Solid Color Adjustment Layer

While changing backgrounds is a topic for another tutorial, we will quickly show you how to place a Solid Color Adjustment Layer underneath your transparent layer to create a different effect.

1. Using the edits from our above tutorial, toggle the X key until the foreground color is Black.

2. Go to the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom right corner of the screen and select Solid Color. Then, click OK.

3. A Color Fill layer should appear on top of your layer stack. If it doesn't, that's okay because now, we’re going to click on the Color Fill layer and drag it just below our transparent layer as shown.

You can see how easy it is to make use of your newly-created transparent layer, and place it onto a new background.

If your subject is a portrait like this one, you could even continue to edit the image using a Photoshop plugin, called Portrait Pro, to enhance the image even further.

The Subject Select tool can be used in substitute of the above method, but there are additional steps involved. That’s because the Subject Select tool works better with complicated backgrounds or with backgrounds where there are multiple subjects. Essentially, we’re telling Photoshop what to select in order to create a transparent background.

In this tutorial, we will prep the image to remove the woman on the left side of our photo, rendering that portion of the image transparent. This will enable us to either fill in the space with another person, or use Photoshop’s various content-aware tools to fill in the pixels.

Again, these are topics for another tutorial, but we’re mentioning them here because there are usually additional editing steps to be done after creating a transparent background.

You can download this photo from Pexels and follow along.

1. With the image imported into Photoshop, go to Select > Subject.

2. Both women will be selected, as indicated by the “marching ants” selection lines around them. Select the Lasso tool in the left column if it doesn’t appear by default. Then, with the Alt key continuously pressed, trace a circle around the woman on the right, and then release the Alt key.

3. Left-click somewhere inside the selected woman on the left. Choose Select Inverse from the menu.

4. Go to Select > Select and Mask.

5. By default, the red indicated the area selected. To select more of the image to be made transparent, like parts of the chair, select the Brush tool as shown.

6. Make sure the Plus (+) icon is selected above. Next, paint red onto the desired regions to be made transparent. There’s only a little bit to do in this case.
7. Then, go to Output To and select New Layer with Layer Mask from the dropdown menu. Click OK.

What you’ll be left with is a partially transparent background where the lady on the left used to be. The selection isn’t perfect. You can still see a few pixels of the woman's hair and face. But this can be cleaned up using the Brush tool with the Background Layer selected.

Alternatively, it can also be left as is. If the person is only being removed, then there are content-aware tools that can be applied to blend in the background. That way, it looks like the woman is alone at the table. Or, another person can be composited in to keep her company.

You may have noticed that there are other options in the Select menu other than Subject. All three of these selection methods use different tools, but they all accomplish the same thing—they all determine what Photoshop selects.

Like the Subject selection option, these tools may give you results that end up with a partial or fully transparent background. But generally speaking, their uses are for more refined results, like when replacing a sky in photoshop.

In the past, Photoshop users had to rely on an assortment of selection tools to create transparent backgrounds. These tools are still available today (the Lasso, Magic Wand, Pen tool, etc.) and remain useful for precision work.

But these days, there are really only two tools needed to create transparent backgrounds, thanks in large part to Adobe Sensei’s AI core.

There are Photoshop plugins, like Luminar AI, that also use AI to help edit your photos. With such advanced technology being applied to photo editing, it’s a safe bet that creating transparent backgrounds will become even more easy and precise in the near future.

Image Credit: Nappy/Pexels