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Photoshop needs "Color to Alpha" button

Contributor ,
Oct 15, 2020 Oct 15, 2020

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I was just chatting with a group of other artists about the need to convert a color into transparency sometimes, and we've all needed such a function, then somebody said that in GIMP there's just a simple button for it, "Color to Alpha."  It does exactly what we need and very easily.  In Photshop this is possible but very cumbersome, having to use the channels to make a selection, then apply a mask.

 

Googling leads to 10 year old articles and people recommending plugins.  But yeah, I'd just like to suggest this as an official feature request.

 

You know how in Photoshop you can use Replace Color?  And you can pick a color, and vary the fuzziness of the selection, then change the color to something else?  It would be just like that I imagine, but instead of changing the color, you increase the opacity of those pixels.

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Oct 15, 2020 Oct 15, 2020

This is a very sensible request on the face of it. The problem is that Select > Color Range already does it. The output is a selection, not a mask. But all you have to do is click the mask button.

 

Generally, "new" features that only combine existing ones get low priority. That's just my experience, not my opinion.

 

In short...well, maybe it might be worth it. Whether it actually happens depends on the marketing value.

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Community Expert ,
Oct 15, 2020 Oct 15, 2020

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You can post your feature request here: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family

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Community Expert ,
Oct 15, 2020 Oct 15, 2020

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This is a very sensible request on the face of it. The problem is that Select > Color Range already does it. The output is a selection, not a mask. But all you have to do is click the mask button.

 

Generally, "new" features that only combine existing ones get low priority. That's just my experience, not my opinion.

 

In short...well, maybe it might be worth it. Whether it actually happens depends on the marketing value.

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Contributor ,
Oct 15, 2020 Oct 15, 2020

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Whoooa, what?  I didnt know this tool existed!  This is exactly what I needed!  This is SO much easier than fiddling with channels and layer masks.  Thank you!

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 13, 2023 Dec 13, 2023

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HI i know its 3 years later but im just wondering why photoshop doesnt have this feature and im also not understanding why so many people dont understand the propblem at hand. 

Photoshops Seletc > Colour Range does not do the same thing as Gimps or Kritas Colour to Alpha 

Kritas Colour to Alpha Filter basicly blends your selected colour with a transparent background wich is essential if you want to extract images with float tarnsparent values in some areas. 

Photoshops Colour Range select just gives u a flat selection of an area. 

This is not the same by far and im suprised why the quote on quote "Best Photoediting program" where u have to pay 25€ a month for doesnt have this. 

If some dev or support is reading thsi and still doesnt know the difference pls go ahead. 

Draw a simply point on a white background with a soft brush. 
Now go into krita Filter > Colours > Colour to Alpha and save the image
Now go into photohsop and do your Select > Colour Range and copy your selction ona transparent background, save the image 

Spot the difference. 

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New Here ,
Dec 20, 2023 Dec 20, 2023

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I completely agree at face value someone may feel that its the same but it's not.

With color to alpha, you can preview the change in a much better method once you have selected all the areas you want. It allows you to blend seamlessly with the background BECAUSE you aren't using a mask. Something with a white or black outline still tends to take too much time to blend in photoshop with color range.

It's the number one feature that always has me crawling back to gimp when I need to create a moveable logo from existing artwork. Which comes up if someone wants you to use existing logos, symbols, or artwork in a new image.

It shows that the person who answered isn't as familiar with how color to alpha is implemented and its various uses. Having a mask obscures the image.

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Community Expert ,
Dec 21, 2023 Dec 21, 2023

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Could you pleas epost meaningul screenshots/files to illustrate how the feature works in those other applications? 

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 21, 2023 Dec 21, 2023

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Lets say you have an image like a Tattoo on a white background. japan_leveled_high.png

 

Now u want to remove the background and make it transparent. U can see in the image that it has a lot of spots where the colour fades out. If we would use this as a multiply layer ontop of something else, it would be fine, but if we want it to be transparent Photoshop doesnt have the option to calculate this. We can only select a colour range, but not "blend it on top of a transaprent background" 
For clarification, i have highlighted the spots in question here. 

Alexander32558309721z_0-1703189494378.png


So to turn this now into a Transparent image with all the values matching the correct alpha value we can use something called "Color to Alpha" on programs like Gimp or Krita. I will use Krita in this example. 

Alexander32558309721z_1-1703189616839.png

Simply open the file in Krita, go to Filtter > Colours > Colour to Alpha. This will open a new window where we now can choose the Colour to convert to alpha and also the threshhold. For this example the default values of White and 100 is perfect for our needed result, assuming that the background is really White, to ensure this i would recommend to adjust the levels of the image first. 

Alexander32558309721z_2-1703189770983.png

As you can see this will make our image Transparent. From my understanding it dynamicly looks at a colour value and figours out how much of our Selected colour is in their and copys this value over to teh alpha channel. 
For a better understanding i will now use the Colour Range option in Photoshop to try to achive the same result.

For this i will open the image in PS and go to Select > Colour Range 

Alexander32558309721z_3-1703190488503.png

I put the Fuzziness to 200 (Personal Preference) and select the white background. I also make sure that Invert is selected as i dont want to select the white part, i wont to select everytihng that is NOT the white part. 

Alexander32558309721z_4-1703190643629.png

 

After this i will cut and paste the selection as a new layer and delete the original. 
Edit: In the process of doing this im noticing that in the actual preview of the image within PS, it seems to have actually set half transparent values. However as u will see just in a sec, it doesnt seem to transfer over to the exported png. 
After this im going to File > Quick Export as png. 
To better demonstrate this i will put both results infront of a lightgrey background, as it is ezier to see the difference their. 
PS

Alexander32558309721z_5-1703191006152.png

 

Krita

Alexander32558309721z_6-1703191083657.png

 

Edit: After even more testing i noticed that indeed the PS version does have half transparent values. However, it doesnt seem to properly fillter out the white tone. As u can see in the results. The Krita version is cleaner and has more contrast, while the ps version still has a lot of white in it. I believe the only reason for the PS version even having half transparent values is because of the fuzzyness, wich is not the same. From my understanding the fuzzyness only blends the edges of the selection. A Fuzzyness of 0 will result in no half transparent values and only a flat selection. 

As you can see in the result both methods calculate and work very different and also, imo, have totally different usecases. As someone that likes to keep as much of his pipeline in as few programs as possible, i would appreciate such a feature in PS. I will also append both images down here.

PS.png

KRITA.png

  

Thank you for reading and i wish you merry christmas. 

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Community Expert ,
Dec 22, 2023 Dec 22, 2023

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Thanks for the sample. 

There is a technique to (more-or-less) unpremultiply colors in Photoshop which in this case would leave the neutral elements problematic, but with a saturation mask one can circumvent that to some extent. 

As this can be done with Smart Objects one could easily switch in other images but keeping the file at hand is certainly less handy than a plain menu command. 

Screenshot 2023-12-22 at 11.50.42.pngclipUnpremultiplyTest2023 copy 2.png

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 22, 2023 Dec 22, 2023

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Thx for the fast reply. Its nice to see that it is possible in a relatively "fast" manner, once u have setup the smart object it is. But yes a simple menu option without this workaround would be a nice to have. As is rn i think even knowing that i could achieve it in PS i would still open krita very quick, and alpha out the white values and then going back to PS. 

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Community Expert ,
Dec 22, 2023 Dec 22, 2023

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Alexander,

 

Here's an action that works on your particular image and other images that you want to remove the black or white background from.

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

google translated

https://www-ayatoweb-com.translate.goog/download/down04.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_...

 

The page is in Japenese, however, the action that still seems to work in photoshop 2024 is the

Photoshop Action File for MacOSX・Windows(Photoshop CS5・CS6)that includes an English version

and the action is called Un-Multiply

There is an updated version 2021, but some of the action steps are in Japenese

so the action doesn't work in English photoshop versions.

 

Anyhow, before running the action Un-Multiply on an image such as yours where you want to remove the white, first make sure the layer is a layer and not a Background layer, Invert the image, run the Un-Multiply action, then invert the image again.

 

Invert image

 

unmulA.png

 

run Un-Multiply action

 

unmulB.png

 

Invert image

 

unmulC.png

 

Image on black background

 

unmulD.png

 

 

final transparent png

 

japan_leveled_highps2024actionunmultiply.png

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Community Expert ,
Dec 23, 2023 Dec 23, 2023

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The result of that Action seems very good, better than my approach actually. 

 

Edit: But their set-up can be recreated with Smart Objects, too; that may not seem like a great improvement over an Action but it would allow for editing the original illustration »on the fly« if necessary. 

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