How To Clean Up A Background In Photoshop

It's easy to remove the background of a photo in Adobe Photoshop in a few ways.
With the most recent version of Photoshop, the Quick Selection Tool streamlines the process for you, making separating your subject from the background simple.
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Do you ever wonder what your fluffy Akita might look like in its natural wintry habitat? Or perhaps, what your cuddly black cat might look like in an unnatural, hostile habitat, like the endzone of an NFL stadium?

While we didn't need Photoshop to envision the latter this football season, in general, Photoshop is your go-to tool to make what's usually only imaginable a reality, or as real as a picture, at least.

Removing a background in Photoshop paves the way for some of the most fun uses of the application.

And while there are more complex, time-consuming ways to rid your subject of its boring background, there's an easy method you can go about with the Quick Selection Tool in Adobe Photoshop CC 2020.

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How to remove a background in Photoshop

1. Start the Photoshop app on your Mac or PC. Pull up the image you'd like to remove the background from by clicking "File," and then "Open…" from the top menu.

2. Next, it's time to wield the Quick Selection Tool. The icon, a solid rectangle surrounded by a dotted line, is found on the left side toolbar by right-clicking the Object Selection Tool and clicking the third icon.

The Quick Selection tool isn't the only way to go about isolating subjects in Photoshop, but it is definitely one of the easier ways.

3. Click piece by piece until you have surrounded the image that you want to remain in the foreground, or the part of the image that will remain after the background has been removed. You can also tap "Select Subject" in the upper "Options" menu bar.

I'm foregoing the "Select Subject" button for the purposes of practice, but in all honesty, it's a very good if not equally effective way to lasso the desired subject matter.

4. Zoom in to fix any imperfections around your subject. You can also do this in "Quick Mask" mode.

5. When you're happy with the image that you want to isolate from the background, right click your outlined subject and click "Layer Via Copy."

Right click and select "Layer Via Copy" from the menu.

6. Tap the eyeball icon in the "Layers" panel next to "Layer 0," as it will be called by default to make the background disappear, in the menu on the right side of your screen.

Alternatively, here's an easier way to remove the background, if you don't need near-perfect margins on your subject

1. Open your image.

2. Create a new layer in the right side "Layers" panel. Deselect "Layer 1," and select the "Background" layer, with your photo as the icon image, under "Layers."

3. With that layer selected, you will now see the option "Remove Background" under the "Quick Actions" panel. Click it.

4. You may need to tap the double arrows to "Expand Panels" in order to see "Quick Actions" if you're on a smaller screen.

My dog subject Roo here is now free to roam Mars, Yankee Stadium, or any other background in the Public Domain that I can slap behind her without infringing on copyright laws.

Related coverage from How To Do Everything: Tech:

How to undo in Photoshop, depending on which version of Photoshop you have
How to rotate an image in Photoshop in 4 simple steps
How to resize an image in Photoshop and save it for optimal use on the web
How to change the background color of your photos in Photoshop to make your images more striking

Emma Witman is an Asheville, NC-based freelance journalist with a keen interest in writing about hardware, PC gaming, politics, and personal finance. She is a former crime reporter for a daily newspaper, and has also written extensively about bartending for Insider. She may or may not judge your drink order when behind the bar. Follow her on Twitter at @emwity.