# Converting white to transparent in Photoshop



## dmurfitt

Hi,

I have a logo with a white background. How can I make all the white in the image transparent, so it will go against a background? I am using Adobe Photoshop CS2.

Thanks a lot,
Dan


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## I Fix 4 U

You could use the magic wand to select that area and then press delete to remove it.


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## dmurfitt

It didn't seem to work. Do you have a 'noob' way to do it?


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## I Fix 4 U

If it is in layers and the actual background layer is white you can change that setting, or you could just delete the background layer and make a transparent layer.

Another is you could take all the other layers and place them on a transparent background image.

But almost all times, if working with a *jpg or *bmp *png etc, if you want to remove white, all I do is convert the image to photoshop type, start workin on it and pullout the magic wand, which will select all of the certain color, *or* a certain "smart" area of the picture. It should select all the white in the area. Delete them one by one. 

There is also a "Remove Color" feature in photoshop, but I don't use it much so i don't know how powerful it is.


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## deepdiver01

Even if you use a transparent layer underneath, you will still get a white background when you save the image as a JPEG, TIFF or similar.

You will have to remove all the unwanted white from the image and when finished, cliack on file>save for web.

This should sent you over to Image Ready. You can then save the file as a .gif or .png file. To the best of my knowledge, these are the only 2 file formats that will allow you to retain a transparent background.


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## dmurfitt

It's not that, the logo is a layer within the Photoshop file and it has a white background. Ultimately, I don't want to save this as an image using transpanency (i.e. gif), but I want the layer which has the image to have the white removed and made transparent so that you can see the background (another layer) through it.

Thanks for your help,


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## I Fix 4 U

Like I said remove all of the color white 
Useing magic wand, remove color, etc. Various methods. 

How do you want them to blend? If you don't want any special blending, MSPaint treats white as transparent, you can just copy one layer and paste into paint, and then copy the other and paste, with blending turned on in MSPaint, and drag so that the copied image fits perfectly over the first part. Boom, done, and in paint


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## slipe

It sounds like you are working on the lower layer. When you erase the white background you still have the file background, which is likely white. If that is the case just reverse the order of the layers in the layers palette and make both visible.

You dont have to seek out the separate parts of the background with the magic wand. Just uncheck Contiguous and it will find all of the white parts. If it selects something in the image hold the Alt key and hit that area with the magic wand. The magic wand with contiguous unchecked works just like Select>Color select.

But however you select the white, when you hit the Delete key it is gone and all that is left is the image. You should be able to drag it onto another image and not take any background with it.


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## morfytastic

Here's a great tip if you have to "peel" a white background off an image which is much cleaner than using the magic wand, as the magic wand often leaves either a halo or a jagged/untidy edge-

1. copy the image to a new layer and delete the background layer
2. copy the image to a new layer again and INVERT it
3. copy the inverted layer into the clipboard, and switch off its visibilty for now
4. go back the the +ve image and create a layer mask
5. press ALT whilst clicking on the mask thumbnail
6. paste the inverted image, then click back to the image thumbnail in the layer palette
7. duplicate this new layer until necessary (5 times?) and delete the inverted layer you created at the start
8. merge down the layers one by one (Ctrl-E) choosing to "apply mask" each time


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