How To Change The Background On A Photo

Larn how to quickly and easily give your paradigm a new background.

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

Find a new background

Replacing a background is something yous'll practice often in Photoshop. You might modify the background to a dissimilar color or way than the original, or place your subject in a unlike scene by swapping groundwork images. Changing the background of an paradigm tin can be completely transformative, giving it a whole new meaning.

Cull the best pick tool for the task

Replacing a background commonly starts with a selection. Photoshop has lots of selection tools to cull 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 push button in the Backdrop console that does the work for yous!

As you work with Photoshop, yous'll start to come across which selection tools are best for which situations. Hither are a few tips to get y'all started:

If your photograph features one subject, endeavour using Select Subject to automatically select that subject area.
If at that place are multiple subjects, use the Object Selection tool to nil in on the 1 you desire to select.

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

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

Select the background or the bailiwick

Whether to select the background or the field of study depends on the epitome. A proficient approach is to select the expanse that looks easiest to isolate. For case, a plain blue sky in the background will be easier to select than a complex discipline in the foreground. If y'all practice select the background rather than the subject, invert the pick then that the field of study is selected before you fine-tune and mask in the next footstep.

A bridge photographed from underneath

Fine-tune the selection

Your initial selection probably won't exist perfect. Photoshop has a defended Select and Mask workspace for fine-tuning selections. In that workspace, you can brand 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 can output the refined selection in the form of a layer mask that hides the background without deleting it. The advantage of a layer mask is that information technology protects the original layer, whereas selecting and deleting parts of the layer itself does not.

Add together a new background

Drag a new background into your paradigm and position it under the image 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 await you want.

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