[Photoshop-Haven] Re: making background transparant

Hi Mike

You want to make the background transparent - ok - so in any case you
have to somehow get rid of, or mask out, the offending background. There
are several methods to do this:
a) simply select the background and delete it, though this is fast, it
is often jaggy as selected pixels near the remaining image are not the
same color value as most of the background previously selected;
b) same as above, but enlarge your viewing size and delete the stray
pixels with the eraser tool set to a hard edge brush, or if your
foreground is geometric enough, the block tool.
c) create a layer mask and set the mask to "hide". Set your
foreground/background colors to black and white. Then use the eraser
tool to hide/mask the background stuff you don't want to see. You may
have to toggle the foreground/background (with the X key) to invoke
erase or unerase mode. This is a non-destructive method which keeps your
image intact. You can hide the mask at any time, and if you erased too
much, you can unerase it anytime.
d) Denver Dan touched on a more accurate method, and that is to create a
clipping path. You have to create a working path with the pen tool, or
selection tool, convert it to clipping path, and save the path. You can
edit this to your heart's content. What I do then, is turn the clipping
path on, make a selection and create a new document, paste the
selection, and then I have a Photoshop / PSD native file with no
background. What you want to do with this image then dictates the file
format you save as... You said you wanted to paste the selection into
different backgrounds - well ok. Then you would flatten each version of
file and save as something specific. For web work, only JPG and PNG
files will maintain transparency. For print, you can often save as
native Photoshop (check with your printer) but EPS or TIFF is preferred.

hth

Jurgen

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