This article was co-authored by our trained team of editors and researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness. Together, they cited information from. In this Article: Removing the background of an image makes it possible to isolate smaller images, add in new backgrounds, or call photoshop delete white background to certain elements of the picture. No matter what your reasoning is, removing the background is easy. Use the Quick Selection Tool to rapidly select the elements you want to keep in the image. The tool resembles a paintbrush with a little dotted-line blob at the end. It should be the fourth tool down from the top of the toolbar. Quick Selection automatically finds edges you click near, adding them to your selection. Click near the edges of your most important items, the things you want to save. Click and drag through the image so that the things you want to save, the non-background, is selected. Keep clicking until everything you want to be saved is in its own selection. Otherwise, this strategy of selecting the important parts of the image is much easier. From here, you have several options. Coming in 1-2 pixels will eliminate bits of background, and is usually not noticeable. Right-click on the selection to pull it out of the background. Delete the background layer to isolate your image. You're free now to do whatever you want with the background layer. You can do this in pieces, slowly chipping away the background and creating new layers via copy, or simply delete the whole later. Either way, you're left with your photoshop delete white background and no background. Create a duplicate of your image, especially the important elements, before deleting anything. Say, for example, that you have a picture of an elephant in the desert. Your goal is to remove the background so that you can add a new one behind the elephant, but the quick selection tools keep erasing part of the elephant as well. Luckily, you have several other tools and techniques for difficult areas. Use the Lasso Tool to get small, manually traced areas. The Lasso Tool just follows you mouse, making a full selection after you trace it back to the beginning. While this is difficult to use for larger images, it is a great way to get precise selections. This tool easily selects large swaths of similar colors, like grass, sky, or a wall. However, if the image you want to keep is similar in color to the background it will not work. Use the Pen Tool to make exact, precise selections around things. The pen tool is the easiest, most robust selection tool. As expected, however, it takes some time to learn. Simply click around the image to drop points, and the program will connect the dots. When you've finished, right-click the line, and click Make Selection. This turns your line into a photoshop delete white background, which you can then copy out of the background. Use layer masks to make the background invisible, but keep it in the image. Layer masks are powerful tools that let you adjust the image, but still keep all the original image information. Now, use the Paintbrush or Pencil to fine tune the image by drawing over the layer mask.
