How to do a black background

W
Posted By
willvv
Sep 5, 2003
Views
88
Replies
3
Status
Closed
Hello friends,

I am a novice to Photoshop Elements and digital photography. Unfortunately I am finding the APE "User Guide" unclear and incomprehensible for getting started on my first project, especially the subject of "layers", which I suspect is what I will need to understand in order to do my project, as below…

I have photos of rare books taken against a light colored homogenous background. So, the edges are fairly regular and straight, but not totally so. I want to produce final images with a totally black background.

How does one go about that?

TIA

Bill von Valtier
Rochester, Michigan
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RC
Richard Coencas
Sep 5, 2003
If the background is homgenous, you should be able to select it with the magic wand tool. Play with tolerance to get the selection area right, and hold down shift if you need to add non-contigous areas. Once you have a good selection you might want to go to Select>Save Selection, so if you need to tweak it later you have it saved. The Selection brush can also be used to more accurately define your selection. At this point you can go to Edit>Fill and fill the selection with black. This is all done on the background layer.

If you want to preserve your original, that is when you will want to use layers. Create a duplicate of the background layer by dragging the background layer to the New layer button (the dog eared page) at the bottom of the layers palette (just a good habit so you are always working on a copy). Create a new empty layer by clicking the new layer icon again. Highlight the empty layer in the layers palette and load the selection you made earlier. Fill that slection with black. Now since it is on it’s own layer you can use the paint brush and eraser tools to further edit the black background.

Hope this helps you get started. There are lots of other ways to do this, but I tried to keep it fairly simple.

Rich
NS
Nancy S
Sep 5, 2003
Will,

I think you’ll find these references will help you have a clear understanding of layers.

< http://www.cclub.metu.edu.tr/e-kitap/cokluortam_araclari/Tea ch%20Yourself%20Photoshop%20in%2014%20Days/ch08.htm>

< http://www.elated.com/tutorials/graphics/photoshop/intro_lay ers/>
W
willvv
Sep 6, 2003
Thanks much for the helpful reply Rich. That does indeed help. I had it accomplished within minutes, and feel like I’m off to at least some kind of start with APE editing.

BillvV

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– 48 MacBook Pro 16″ mockups

– 6000 x 4500 px

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