PHOTOSHOP FEATURES
Discover how transparent backgrounds can help your photos and designs stand out.
Get rid of the things you don’t want in your backgrounds so your subjects can really shine. Explore how Adobe Photoshop — with a little help from Al — can automatically isolate any subject from a distracting background. Or use DIY features to make any background transparent so you can replace it with a new background of your choice.
Improve focus with background removal.
In product photography and graphic design, it’s often necessary to remove a distracting background from your shots in order to put the focus where it belongs — on your main subject. With image editing tools, you can actually make backgrounds disappear completely. You can also make a white background transparent in Photoshop so you can isolate your subject or place it over a different background. (This works for backgrounds of any color.) This can help you better showcase a shoe, model, or even your own logo or artwork.
Work smarter with AI.
Detect backgrounds and subjects with a little help from artificial intelligence. Adobe Sensei-powered tools automatically remove backgrounds in the Layers panel. Adjustable sliders let you control elements like contrast, edge smoothness, and obscurity.
Expand your brand.
Showcase your style and boost brand identity by using transparent backgrounds. You can pop your newly isolated subjects, branding, logos, and more onto website headers, email signatures, ads, and more with ease.
Mask up.
Use mask layers to hide and reveal selected portions of your background — nondestructively. (That means without deleting any pixels, so you get as many do-overs as you need.) Expand your selection area (the portion of an image defined for editing) or remove unwanted background in order to further refine the image.
Go global.
Tap into global refinement sliders to smooth and feather the edges of your image. This improves image contrast and sharpness to ensure that the details of your subject aren’t lost as you make the background transparent.
Different tools for different jobs.
If your image is especially busy or complicated, add extra editing control with precision tools designed to be as exacting as your selection demands.
Get close to the edge with the Quick Selection tool.
Quickly "paint" a selection with a fully customizable round brush tip. As you drag, the selection expands and automatically locates defined edges for easier editing.
Transform your image with the Magic Wand.
Make a solid color background transparent with one click of this wand. Just click on any part of an image and all other pixels of the same color in the image will be selected. Then you can either mask or hide those areas.
Round up your edges with the Lasso.
Use your mouse or stylus to make selection borders with a freehand drawing. No need to worry about accuracy — you can easily add and subtract from the selections to clean up problem areas.
Zero in with the Refine Edge tool.
Use Refine Edge to fine-tune rough or smooth edges of selections you made with the various selection tools. For detailed photos with complex edges, the Refine Brush Edge allows you to brush over certain areas to tell Photoshop where to improve the edge.
How to make a background transparent in Photoshop.
Follow this step-by-step guide to isolate your subjects as you create a transparent background in Photoshop. Or make your background disappear entirely with AI-powered tools like Remove Background.
1. Open it:
Upload or drag and drop your image file into Photoshop, and then click › Window › Layers.
2. Duplicate it:
Press Control+A (on a PC) or Command+A (on a Mac) to select the entire image, then Control/Command+C to make a copy of the original image, and finally Control/Command+V to paste it on a new layer.
3. Hide it:
In the Layers palette that appears on the right side of your image, click the eye icon to hide the background layer.
4. Remove it:
In the Properties panel, click Quick Actions › Remove Background.
5. Save it:
After Adobe Sensei analyzes the image and removes the background, save as a PSD (Photoshop) or PNG file to retain the transparency.
Tip: You can take a sneak peek at the layer mask by holding down Alt on Windows or Option on Mac and clicking the layer’s thumbnail.
Discover more tools to up your edits.
Expand your image editing horizons with these helpful Photoshop tutorials.
Understand layers.
Discover what layers in Photoshop are, what they’re good for, and how to use them.
Be selective.
Learn how to create a selection and refine it, plus discover other popular selection tools.
Create composite photos.
It’s easier than you think to combine multiple photos to make dazzling new images.
Replace backgrounds.
With a Photoshop transparent background, you can quickly give new life to your images.
How to make a background transparent in Photoshop.
1. Open it:
Upload or drag and drop your image file into Photoshop, and then click › Window › Layers.
3. Hide it:
In the Layers palette that appears on the right side of your image, click the eye icon to hide the background layer.
4. Remove it:
In the Properties panel, click Quick Actions › Remove Background.
5. Save it:
After Adobe Sensei analyzes the image and removes the background, save as a PSD (Photoshop) or PNG file to retain the transparency.
Tip: You can take a sneak peek at the layer mask by holding down Alt on Windows or Option on Mac and clicking the layer’s thumbnail.
Frequently asked questions.
You can use the Remove Background tool under Quick Actions to strip out the background and use the Brush tool to clean up any small bits that remain.
Yes, but there are limitations. GIFs don’t support alpha transparency, which means every pixel needs to be 100% transparent or not. There’s no in between. If you need to have more nuanced transparency, a better option might be a transparent PNG.
Yes, you can use the free Adobe Express plan to make the background of an image transparent. Just upload your photo and create transparent backgrounds in a few taps.
Yes, you can use a script in Photoshop to make backgrounds transparent in bulk. Photoshop uses a scripting language called JavaScript that can automate many repetitive tasks and perform batch processing on multiple images.
You can create a script that takes a set of images and applies specific actions, including making backgrounds transparent, to all of them. To run this script, use the File > Scripts > Browse… menu in Photoshop and select the script file. This way you can save time and effort in making multiple backgrounds transparent without manually performing the task on each image.
Yes, they can. In the Layers panel, click the Properties panel and then click the Remove Background button. This quick action removes the background and leaves the layer with a mask around the subject.
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