Known Participant

Answered

Can Photoshop knock out white (or any other color) yet?

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
December 2, 2010
6 replies
33722 views

Is there a simple way to knock out white (or any other color) in Photoshop CS5?

It's hard for me to imagine that in this day and age, doesn't have an easy method of doing what this plug-in allowed us to do over a decade ago.

Surely, by now, I can stop installing this plug-in (originally created for PS on Win95).

Correct answer Noel Carboni

I don't follow links as a rule.

What do you mean by "knock out"? Are you trying to make an image partially transparent?

You can select parts of an image in Photoshop via a large variety of different methods in Photoshop, from color ranges to manual lassoing, then either delete through a layer or add a layer mask to make those regions transparent.

I've used Photoshop for 16+ years now and haven't found a need for a 3rd party plug-in to help me make selections yet.

-Noel

L

lazlazlaz

Participating Frequently

Background Eraser Tool. Quite simple and I use it for removing white backgrounds from soft shadows. Those are difficult to mask.

A

Anonymous

Jesus, for an "expert" that guy is pretty clueless.

Must be really hard to understand the difference between masking and the feature requested here.

Yeah, why request actual features to help you do what you need, when you can do something different than what you need! Genius!

Thing is that I don't think GIMPs feature is quite a one click solution to remove backgrounds if the background's color is even slightly present on the subject. Would still need some kind of masking.

Still very useful for other things. Take for example the first fire image here:

http://www.textures.com/download/flames0027/64348

It's on a black background, but I need it transparent. Just the flame, nothing else. And I'm sure some expert will tell me about the great feature of using the Screen mode and completely and utterly miss the point. But no, I need it transparent and saved as .png.

Well, GIMP can do that:

http://i.imgur.com/hYcrYBx.jpg

imgur converted it to jpg and put it on white, but it was a transparent png with no trace of black.

Impossible to do in Photoshop, no matter how much expert masking you're doing.

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

Jesus, for an "expert" that guy is pretty clueless.

Who are you talking about exactly?

Herbert2001

Inspiring

@jitendra: I do not understand how or why you chose that answer as the "correct" one. It answers nothing, and Noel's response at the time did not understand the full scope of the question: it was not merely about cutting out a background, but rather about "unmultiplying" the background's colour in regards to shadows and semi-transparent images.

Photoline offers a colour to transparency adjustment layer that works quite well, and is super easy to work with. And multiple of these can be stacked, if required. It does help speed up things considerably. This is exactly what the OP is asking about. Photoshop does a pretty good job in regards to general masking and cutting out hair, and so on. But a quick option to remove the background colour from semi-transparent areas is missing, as far as I am aware.

Then again, it would also be nice to have proper keying tools in Photoshop (such as the keying tools in BlackMagic Fusion :-P. It speeds up the workflow.

c.pfaffenbichler

Community Expert

If the screenshot you posted is supposed to show a good result I am not that impressed (the dark lower edges for example seem problematic) and in the case of this image (smoke on black Background) Photoshop’s Blend If settings or even Blend Modes might provide for a "fairly easy" solution within Photoshop itself.

Herbert2001

Inspiring

Agreed, not a great example - it was just a quick example. The dark lower edges are part of the original, minus the black (unmultiplied). The result retains that information. Colour to transparency is, however, very helpful in removing the multiplied background colour from the smoke. Layer blend if is not going to help here, because it will not remove the black component from the smoke - although it can be helpful to adjust the initial result.

Anyway, it is a very handy tool. I use it all the time to quickly unmultiply coloured backgrounds for further editing.

O

Olly_

Participating Frequently

I'm a new Photoshop CC user and new to forums... apologies for adding to this old discussion, but if it's still active, can someone suggest a simple way in Photoshop to convert all the white in the attached logo to transparent? Gimp was mentioned in this discussion and it worked quickly and well (Color-to-Alpha, white, OK, Export), for me to have for example a light yellow-to-grey gradient background - so can it be done easily in Photoshop? I loaded the Gimp result into Photoshop and tested it on a white background (it then looked identical to the original logo), and on other colors, and it's perfect for my needs. So can it done to this accuracy and so easily in Photoshop? I did try the suggestion in this discussion (an Adobe video for CS5) to use Quick Select, mask and Refine Edge, but that needed multiple steps and I couldn't get the drop shadow areas right. I'm hoping there's an easier and better way? Thanks in advance, Olly.

PS: If needed I can add the Gimp version, and my Photoshop PSD with the test layers.

Chris Cox

Legend

Background Eraser Tool, Select -> Color Range, or any of the "white to transparency" actions found on the net.

Herbert2001

Inspiring

Both the background eraser tool and the color range select option are unable to achieve the "color to alpha/transparency" result: the shadows remain grey, and contain the white component.

Alternatively, you can download this black unmultiply plugin/action:

http://www.ayatoweb.com/download/down04.html

To remove white, first invert the image <ctrl><i>, then apply the Ayato Unmultiply action, then invert the image once again. Result: the white component is removed.

A

Anonymous

I'm not sure that I understand the aversion to plugins. That is how Photoshop works. Yes, it would be nice if Photoshop by default shipped with such a plugin. You could make a request on Adobe's feature request page.

There are several free third-party plugins that do this and a previous discussion here pointed to a ready-made action. It should not be much trouble for Adobe to make an easy-to-use interface for a series of functions that Photoshop has had for years. Perhaps they could follow the example set by GIMP's 'Color to alpha' function.

J

jyeager11Author

Known Participant

Hi Marian,

A color-to-alpha option would be awesome indeed.

How would YOU go about manually knocking out a solid background color, without using the wand? Is there a way to do it in less than 20 steps?

(Keeping in mind, we want the background color that bleeds into the main subject on its outer edges to be knocked out too, while leaving in whatever other colors exist in those pixels. So blonde hair anti-aliasing to a blue background would simply become semi-transparent blonde fading to 100% transparent bg.)

Everyone keeps saying how it's do-able, but no one's saying how.

And I agree, not every little option needs to be included in Photoshop. But I don't consider anything that facilitates cutting out subjects with all alpha edges intact, and ready to be superposed on any background, "little". Anymore than being able to quickly modify the hue of an image can be considered a "little" option.

Noel Carboni

Legend

mjyeager wrote:

Keeping in mind, we want the background color that bleeds into the main subject on its outer edges to be knocked out too, while leaving in whatever other colors exist in those pixels

Well, that's the trick, isn't it?

Something so easy to describe in human terms is not at all easy to do. While your brain might be able to discern the difference between a reflected highlight on a strand of hair and the color around the edge, that's not nearly as easy to do in software, though Photoshop CS5's new selection refinement tools are definitely more advanced than those in its predecessors.

You're saying this plug-in you once used did it without much work? Got any results to show?

-Noel

Noel CarboniCorrect answer

Legend

I don't follow links as a rule.

What do you mean by "knock out"? Are you trying to make an image partially transparent?

You can select parts of an image in Photoshop via a large variety of different methods in Photoshop, from color ranges to manual lassoing, then either delete through a layer or add a layer mask to make those regions transparent.

I've used Photoshop for 16+ years now and haven't found a need for a 3rd party plug-in to help me make selections yet.

-Noel

J

jyeager11Author

Known Participant

I don't explain things when a link has been provided as a rule.

I'm not talking about selecting. I'm talking about automatically knocking out a color (in the case of the link provided, white) with all alphas included.

Noel Carboni

Legend

Okay, just for you I made an exception and followed the link.

The explanation there was all but useless. It seems I correctly interpreted your "knock out" terminology to mean that you wish to create transparency.

I suspect there's a fairly direct method to recreate its effects involving selecting first, then other manipulations, but I don't plan to research this old plug-in any more to try to help you. If you're unwilling to post any better description of just what you're trying to do, then good luck to you getting help.

-Noel

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