Replacing all gray from a picture?

[PavkataBG]

Hello,

I am pretty new to photoshop and I am very confused.

I recently have updated my forum's theme to a white one and I have a gray background on my forum rank pictures:

I tried to replace the color through Image > Adjustments > Replace color (or something like that), but that resulted in:

which is still gray... and also the colors are different.

How can I remove the background while still keeping the shadows?

Thank you so much!

[Chuck Uebele · Accepted solution]

Photoshop considers gray not a color, so replace color doesn't work on white, black,  and shades of gray. Use another tool like color range to select the gray areas, then use an adjustment layer, or solid color layer (with a blend mode like multiply) to replace the gray.

[Simmer1]

Hi,

Here is an example of creating a white fill using the Brush Tool set to around 9px and as low as 4 pixel when I got closer to the edges and hardness of 29% .

To achieve more of a faded effect for the edges of the shadow increase the brush size slightly and reduce the hardness to 0%.