Making a black background transparent

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
January 5, 2018
6 replies
25314 views

Can someone please help me before I throw my laptop out the window. I have a a png file of just some white words on a black background. I want to remove the black background and just have the white words so when I overlay the image onto a T Shirt template like on Shopify, the text overlays but the black box is gone.

I was easily able to create black words and eliminate the white background using the rasterize function and then image trace. But I cannot get rid of the black background.

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Correct answer Brad @ Roaring Mouse

If you want a quick method and you have Photoshop, open the file and make it into a layer mask by copying it and pasting it into a New Layer Mask layer, then fill that layer with White (or any other colour you might want). Then export the file as either PSD or PNG to preserve the transparent background. Like so:

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Correct answer

Community Expert

If you want a quick method and you have Photoshop, open the file and make it into a layer mask by copying it and pasting it into a New Layer Mask layer, then fill that layer with White (or any other colour you might want). Then export the file as either PSD or PNG to preserve the transparent background. Like so:

Scott Falkner

Community Expert

I would open the file in Photoshop then Command-click on the RGB channel to make the image a selection. White parts of the image will be selected, black will not. I would not be sure that the black background is pure black, so some tweaking is in order.

Press Q to enter quickmask. This will turn the selection into a channel. What you want is for white-ish areas to be white (fully selected) and black-ish areas to be black (fully unselected), so use a Levels adjustment to make dark areas black and light areas white. Press Q again.

Now you have a selection where the text should be. Make a new layer and fill with white. Delete the original layer. Save this as a PSD or PNG. The black areas in the original image are now transparent.

S

Sethf

Participant

I think I may have figured this out for myself.

When using image trace, it creates one large group. If you ungroup the image trace in the properties panel, you should be able to select the black area and delete it.

D

domrsimAuthor

Participant

Hi manal, looking at your example in the picture, I am trying to do the exact opposite. How do I keep the white letters where they are but have the transparent grid behind the white letters.

I can easily do this with black letters but not with white.

manal shanableh

Legend

In my example, when i select both the black rectangle and the word, using Shape Builder tool, drag the mouse with alt, you will cut the letter from the black rectangle, it will be transparent.