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Creating transparent backgrounds with Photoshop

Posted on 9. January 2010 05:20 by David Knipper|

I've been doing some work for an embroidery company lately. They had a bunch of logos in bitmap format that had white backgrounds that needed to be made transparent. There exists many ways to get this job done by using Photoshop. Here's my method:

Open Photoshop.
Open your file.
On the Toolbar: Click "Image" -> Mode -> RGB Color. Your image may already be in RGB Mode, if so, go to next step.
Make sure you can view layers. Click on "Window" and click on "Layers" if not checked.
You should now a thumbnail of your image in the "Layers" tab. Next to thumbnail, you should see a padlock icon, double click the padlock.
A "New Layer" dialog box will appear. Click "OK."
In the Toolbox, select the "Magic Wand" tool.
Here’s the tricky part. Click on the white background of the image. If the selection does not look like it’s been selected correctly, unselect the selection, adjust the tolerance (the Tolerance control is below the Menu), and reselect. Repeat this procedure until you are satisfied with the selection.
Once the image looks like the white is selected properly, press the delete key. You now have a transparent background.
Save the image as a .PNG, .TIFF, .GIF, or .PSD. These formats support transparency.