How To Change The Background In Photoshop Cs6

Learn how to quickly and hands give your image a new background.

Two women dancing barefoot in front of a sand dune in blue dresses

Notice a new background

Replacing a background is something yous'll do often in Photoshop. Yous might change the background to a different color or style than the original, or place your discipline in a different scene by swapping background images. Changing the background of an image can exist completely transformative, giving it a whole new meaning.

Cull the all-time option tool for the job

Replacing a background usually starts with a pick. Photoshop has lots of selection tools to choose from. There are tools for making geometric selections, tools for drawing freeform selections, and tools for making a selection automatically. There's even a Remove Background quick action button in the Backdrop panel that does the work for you!

Every bit you piece of work with Photoshop, y'all'll start to encounter which pick tools are all-time for which situations. Hither are a few tips to go you started:

If your photograph features one subject, try using Select Subject to automatically select that subject.
If there are multiple subjects, use the Object Selection tool to aught in on the 1 yous want to select.

Two part image of a woman on a blue background and a room with various blue objects

If the area y'all desire to select has a well-defined edge, try dragging with the Quick Selection tool.
If you're selecting a solid color groundwork, try the Magic Wand tool.
If you select too much, utilize the Subtract from Selection option available with many selection tools.
To fine-tune a selection made with whatsoever choice tool, jump into the Select and Mask workspace, which has dedicated brushes and controls for refining a selection.

Select the background or the subject

Whether to select the groundwork or the subject depends on the image. A good arroyo is to select the area that looks easiest to isolate. For case, a plain blue sky in the background will be easier to select than a complex subject field in the foreground. If y'all practise select the groundwork rather than the subject, invert the selection then that the subject is selected before you lot fine-melody and mask in the next pace.

A bridge photographed from underneath

Fine-tune the selection

Your initial selection probably won't be perfect. Photoshop has a dedicated Select and Mask workspace for fine-tuning selections. In that workspace, you can make your selection fit the image more precisely and smooth out any rough selection edges.

Woman holding a chihuahua dog selected to isolate and change the background color

You tin can output the refined selection in the form of a layer mask that hides the groundwork without deleting it. The reward of a layer mask is that it protects the original layer, whereas selecting and deleting parts of the layer itself does non.

Add a new background

Elevate a new background into your image and position it under the epitome layer in the Layers panel. The new groundwork will appear wherever there is black on the image layer's mask. Experiment with different backgrounds—solid colors, color gradients, patterns, and images—to get the expect you want.

Woman holding a chihuahua dog with a pink and white striped background