How To Change White To Transparent In Photoshop

Undoing the evil act of flattening a vector graphic, one JPG at a fourth dimension.

This tutorial will teach y'all an effective method for isolating graphics such as logos and icons from white backgrounds. We essentially employ the graphic to mask itself off from the background. It is always preferable to get the original graphics if possible, but for those situations where a flat epitome is all you have, this technique may just save the day.

Preview

Here is a quick preview of what yous tin can expect from using this technique, the epitome on the left is a flattened JPG file with no transparency layers. The right side is the aforementioned image afterward using the technique in this tutorial.

Step 1

The first stride is to open your image in Photoshop. I am using a logo from this set up on Medialoot.

Now of form, the actual logo template is completely vector, merely in this hypothetical situation we are going to pretend that some deranged lunatic has flattened the logo into a JPG and deleted the original file from existence (the horror!).

Stride 2

Double click on the background layer to unlock it, and and then create a new Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer.

Step 3

Open up the Properties window and turn the Saturation all the way down to -100 on the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

Step 4

Add a new Invert adjustment layer.

Footstep five

Add a new Levels aligning layer, and in the Properties window adjust the highlights input value until the areas that you lot desire to be 100% opacity are #FFFFFF (you tin can utilize the eye dropper tool to check what color individual pixels are).

The groundwork should already be #000000 if it was pure white to begin with.If it isn't so you will also need to adjust the shadows input level.

Pace 6

Press CMD/CTRL+A to select all, and the CMD/CTRL+SHIFT+C to Copy Merged.

Step vii

Click the layer visibility icon on all 3 adjustment layers and select the original layer over again. Press the Add layer mask push button at the bottom become the Layers window.

Step eight

Open the Channels window (Window > Channels) and click the layer visibility icon on the newly created Mask channel. Then press CMD/CTRL+V to paste the image into the mask.

Stride nine

Click the layer visibility icon on the Mask aqueduct again to plough off the carmine overlay and see the results.

Step x

This is actually looking pretty good now, particularly on transparent and lighter colored backgrounds. But something unexpected happens on darker backgrounds. The edges get very crude looking and unpleasant looking.

Step 11

Luckily in that location is a simple fix.

Press CMD/CTRL+G to grouping the masked layer and then with the grouping select ALT+LEFT CLICK on the mask layer icon to create a choice.

Step 13

Go to Select > Modify > Contract... and enter the 1 pixels and then click OK.

On high resolution images you may need to increase this to 2 pixels or more but it's best to attempt the smallest possible value showtime to avoid unnecessary masking.

Step 14

Click theAdd new mask push button once again to create a new mask on the group layer. The result are much better this time around on both light and dark backgrounds.

Stride 15

With that existence said, information technology unlikely we would ever desire to use such a night text colour on a nighttime background anyhow. Only I wanted to share the additional steps for smoothing out the edges merely in instance.

Here I selected the greyness elements of the design with the marquee tool and Inverted them with an aligning, and also used a Levels adjustment layer to make the gray elements white instead.

Effect

And here is the result. Nosotros take gone from a completely flattened JPG epitome to a versatile transparent logo that works on both light and nighttime backgrounds. Just be sure not to salvage it every bit a JPG again .