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Need to make white background transparent (pic inside), help?


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postlapsaria

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I have a .jpg file of a band logo with white text (bordered by sketchy black outlines) on a white background. I'd like to keep the text and border effects the same but make the background transparent and then save it as a transparent .png or .gif so that just the white text (with the black text borders still included) appears the same on my website no matter what the background color of the page is. Here's the image:

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/1518/logonewbig.jpg

I want to keep all the black sketchy outlines intact and I want the white text itself to remain white and not transparent, I just want the white background surrounding it to be transparent. I've tried selecting just the text with all the little lines and such of the text borders included so that I can make it into a new layer and then paste it onto a transparent background but I've been having trouble successfully selecting it...the way the text is written, I haven't had much luck using the magic wand or quick selection tools to properly select it.

Another (less desirable) option would be to fill in the white background with the background color of the page I'm going to be posting it on (hex color #1d1d1d) but filling it in with the paint bucket in Photoshop CS5 fills in the majority of the white text as well so that hasn't really worked either.

Any other solutions to this? Or anyone else want to try their hand at it? I've painstakingly picked away at it, trying to select only the text and borders, but I keep failing at getting it all selected properly so at this point I'm hoping someone else can step in and offer some assistance before I spend even more time trying to get it right and inevitably failing.

Thanks in advance for any help, it's much appreciated!
 
I see no image :-/ maybe cause I am from iphone or???
 
Since the black has breaks it's not contiguous so you can't just select the outside white and delete it, as you already found out.

I used the magic wand to select the black then copied to a new layer. Selected the black on the new layer, and inverted the selection. Then painted with white inside the letters, trying not to go beyond the black (as the black is not selected the white does not cover it).

I added a red layer below to demonstrate:
 
just use the magic wand set the tolerance at about 5 that should give a nice selection )click on white area, then select similar> then inverse it. Copy/Paste new layer, close the jpg or delete the original save as png .worked real go for me

yep...... just like that ^^^also
 
Thanks for the responses,

Trying HawkEye's method, I was able to get the black outline into a new transparent layer just fine, but as for getting the text white again, do I have to manually paint it all in with the paintbrush without going outside the black borders? This is the type of thing I was trying:



Is there any easy way to get rid of the extra white outside the black edges so that area is transparent again? Or a quick way to fill in the insides of the letters with white other than manually carefully painting them in?

I then tried iDad's method and ended up with this as a result:



If I saved that as a transparent .png image the insides of the letters would be transparent and show up as the background color of the webpage they're on which isn't what I want -- I'm trying to get the insides of the letters to still be white, I just want the background to be transparent.

I'm sure I can manually paint in the letters with a white paintbrush using HawkEye's method, but since I have many other similar logos like this to do it sounds like it'll be a pretty time-consuming job so I was hoping for a quicker, easier more automated way of doing it. Is there any way to do it like that?
 
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If you were to look closely at the text and paint over any breaks in the black (make the black/white contiguous) you could then use the magic wand to select the outside white area only.
 
hawkeye said:
Only took a minute to close the gaps in the black, then magic wand and delete.
Click to expand...

Is there any easy way to do what you've done but remove the drawn-in black lines to close the gaps after the outside white area has been deleted? I tried making a new layer for just the black lines then another layer to paint in the letters with white but so far nothing I've tried has ended up with the result of the transparent background, white inside the letters, and the black lines filling the gaps successfully removed at the end
 
Why does nobody use blend if? (I think its awesome) Maybe I'm just lame.

If you want to get the black on its own layer, create a new layer and drag it under the image layer. Go to the fx tab under blending options use the blend if sliders. Take all the white/grey out. Now when you have the black isolated, Merge layers onto a new layer w/ alt+shift+cntrl+E. make a new layer under the merged layer and you can paint/fill the pixels you want white.
logonewbig copy.jpg
 
postlapsaria said:
Is there any easy way to do what you've done but remove the drawn-in black lines to close the gaps after the outside white area has been deleted? I tried making a new layer for just the black lines then another layer to paint in the letters with white but so far nothing I've tried has ended up with the result of the transparent background, white inside the letters, and the black lines filling the gaps successfully removed at the end
Click to expand...

Draw the lines on a new layer, then ctrl+click to select the lines. Save that selection. Merge the line layer with the original, magic wand the outside white and delete. Load the saved selection and hit delete.
 
If you want a transparent background so you can put the text on something else, set the blending mode to multiply and it'll get rid of all the white, easy as that ^^

Untitled-1.jpg
 
Stric9 said:
Why does nobody use blend if? (I think its awesome) Maybe I'm just lame.

If you want to get the black on its own layer, create a new layer and drag it under the image layer. Go to the fx tab under blending options use the blend if sliders. Take all the white/grey out. Now when you have the black isolated, Merge layers onto a new layer w/ alt+shift+cntrl+E. make a new layer under the merged layer and you can paint/fill the pixels you want white.
View attachment 9279
Click to expand...

Can't believe I've never noticed those sliders before, and I used blending options all the time >_<
 
hawkeye said:
Draw the lines on a new layer, then ctrl+click to select the lines. Save that selection. Merge the line layer with the original, magic wand the outside white and delete. Load the saved selection and hit delete.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a good solution but I'm having some trouble with it. I went to Layer - New Layer to create "Lines Layer" in which I drew the lines. I used ctrl+click on the lines in Lines Layer which selects them but the "Save Selection" option is greyed out under the select menu...am I missing something?
 
Stric9 said:
Now you know. I find very few people use them......I use them all the time. I look for reasons to use them infact.
Click to expand...

I think it would be very cool if you find the time to do a tutorial in which you outline a number of the situations in which you do use blend if options. More people would use it I'm sure if they knew when to try it out. I use it occasionally but I don't think of it sometimes when I bet it would be the perfect time. I'd like to know more.
 
Sorry Clare just saw this post. I will have to keep track over the next little bit and see how often I use it and compile a list. I haven't been doing much photoshop as of late though.....seems that my gaming addiction is back in full force.
 
Stric9 said:
Sorry Clare just saw this post. I will have to keep track over the next little bit and see how often I use it and compile a list. I haven't been doing much photoshop as of late though.....seems that my gaming addiction is back in full force.
Click to expand...

No big. I'm not a gamer of the type you mean, I suppose that is. But if Full Tilt USA were up and running, I'd be wasting too much time gaming there myself. Free Play, don't get me wrong, LOL.
 
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