Switch Photo Background to any Color with Ease

Welcome! In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to take out the background. There are several ways you can do this, and then we’re going to drop a different color in there. I’ve done this before, but this is another method. If you have a better or different way of doing it, just let me know because, in Photoshop, there are many ways to do something.

We’re actually going to remove the background. This is how I find it—there might be a better way, but I don’t know how to find it otherwise. I just put in “Discovery” or “Discover” up here at the top where it says “Help,” and when I do that, it brings this up. I’m going to go right here to the house icon, and when I do that, it has a lot of different things here.

We’re going to go to Quick Actions, and once I do that, it brings up this really cool menu of all these different quick actions. I’m going to show you how to remove the background using a quick action, and then we’re going to drop a different color in there. Click on this quick action that says Remove Background.

Okay, so I didn’t do that right. Let’s try it again. Let’s go to select the background that you’re going to actually be using. It’s this layer right here. Make sure, if you have different layers, you select the right one. Let’s try it again: Remove Background.

Okay, so it did a pretty good job. Now, if you notice, there are some areas that aren’t good. We’re going to clean it up. The best way—if you have another way of doing this, let me know—is to go Command + (which is basically like the zoom-in tool). Hold down the spacebar, and right here, we’ve got this ear area that we’re going to work with.

We’re going to select this to be black, but we’re not going to use black. We’re going to switch this little arrow here to go to white, and we’re going to paint this in. Then, I’m going to go to my Brush Tool, and you can change the settings around to what you need on this photo. I’ve been playing around with it, and it’s roughly 40 pixels in size. It’s a hard brush, and it’s roughly 20%, so it has a slight softness on the edge. I might have to change this around.

Right here, we’re going to reveal this area. Again, notice that we’re on the little mask right there. Basically, we are saying, “No, we want to see some of this.” It does look a little bit soft, so I’m going to make it a little bit harder and just keep playing with this. It might still need to be harder. I’m playing around—now I’m at 30%. You can see what looks best. That looks a little bit better.

Okay, so right there, we’ve got that. I’m going to try 40% now. If you notice, the edges are a little bit hard. Notice right in there: I need to actually hide some of this. I need to mask some of this because now it’s got red. The original background was red.

I’m going to go Command +, and I’m going to actually come in here and change the size to maybe nine pixels. Let’s experiment. Let’s try nine. You can change that. Let me go Command Z because I went the wrong way. We had white here on the foreground swatch color. Change it to black because now, on our little mask here, we’re hiding part of the photo that it didn’t quite get. Right here, we’re doing that, and you can notice where it kind of made it soft too.

Now, there’s some hair here—that doesn’t matter as much—but I do know with this ear over here, we need to clean this up. Now I’m going to go back to white to show this part right here, and I’m going to change the size of the brush. With white, I’m revealing the ear because the ear got accidentally selected. That’s not too bad. You can go back and forth.

Notice it’s a little jagged here. I’m just going over the edge to make it look more natural. Notice that it’s kind of putting the face in there a little bit. I’m going to try it again. What you can do is clean up stuff because the brush is slightly soft. I’m just going over a couple of areas that looked jagged.

Now, Command 0 will make this full size. That looks a lot better. Now, let’s drop a color back there. Let’s just drop a color behind the person—any color you want. I’m going to go up here to Layer, and I’m going to go to New Fill Layer. Let’s try this: Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color.

What’s cool about this is that you’re going to hit OK, and now let’s change that color to something like this. Notice that the layer is over everything, right? It’s on top of our picture. We don’t want that, so slide that layer to the bottom. Now, if you double-click on this little color swatch right here, you can change this color to anything you want and see the change in real time.

Actually, I kind of like a really cool color like that. Change it to whatever you want. Have fun with it. I think that’s a nice contrast. Hopefully, you got something out of that. Thanks for watching!