Adobe Photoshop CS3 Background Eraser Tutorial

This tutorial will go over a simple tool that is capable of erasing backgrounds. It is not the most complete tool, but it is very smart if you do it correctly. My tutorial will show you how it can be correctly used to make areas of your photos disappear. From there you will be able to do whatever you want with the space! As you know I am doing this in Adobe Photoshop CS3 if you see any difference in your version of Adobe Photoshop. Let's begin the tutorial.

You will want to start by opening up the image you want to work with. The one below is my truck and boat just after a fishing trip. It sure was fun!

Now you will select the Quick Selection Tool. This tool is like the magic wand but not as automatic. It lets you take sections at a time by dragging. It basically works on a color redundancy equation to guess what an object is.

As you can see that I have selected the area that I want to erase the background in. Now you can do the same with your image.

Now you can select the Background Eraser Tool to begin the process of erasing the background.

From the picture below you can see that I drag the icon around in the area that that I marked off. What you don’t know is that I pulled the cursor over the area that wasn’t marked off as well. The background eraser tool only works within the confined areas that you give it. If you select an area inside an image, it will only be able to erase the background in that area. That is why it is such a cool feature.

Now you can see that I have pretty much completely erased the whole area. It would have been a lot easier if I had increased the cursor size though. You can do this by going to the top of the program when the Background Eraser Tool is selected and changing the brush size from the default 13 to something higher.

Now we can go about filling in the area with something else. The area will still be outlined during this process. I am going to just fill in the background with a color just to show you it is possible. You can add any kind of image in that section of you please. To fill in the area just navigate to Edit/Fill.

Now you will select a color for the background.

Now you will change the blending mode if you desire or the opacity of the color you are filling the area with.

Now you have the finished project.

This tutorial is fairly easy, but many people are not aware of this great tool. So took a little time to make a demonstration and post it as a tutorial for your enjoyment. Hopefully, it will be easier to find than it is right now. Of course this tool is great for other things as well. I will let your imagination run wild with those thoughts though.

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