Tutorial: Replacing the background Easily in CS5!

A great friend of mine over at AE Photography whom is the master of replacing backgrounds actually taught me how to do this. You should check him out....www.facebook.com/aephotographyct. What he showed me is a wonderful way to replace the background of an image using layer masks. Which means that you can work non-destructively! Also, this method of removing your background also allows for you to get those tricky loose hairs! The only thing with this tutorial is that you have to have a solid background! So you can't take like a couple on a beach and put them in a forest kind of thing.  Lets get started!


1st: Open the image you want to edit in CS5. Note: If you have a "wrinkly" background and are going to edit it smooth...now is the time to do it. For example purposes only, I am not smoothing my background...yet.

Step 2: Drag in the background that you want to use on top of your original image! For my example, I am using a pink damask. Make sure to fit the background to fit your image. Note: Press the SHIFT key while resizing to avoid any distortion.  You can rename your layer too to avoid any confusion.

Step 3: In your layers pallete change the blending mode of the first layer to Multiply. Note: For lighter backgrounds that you are switching out...you can use soft light.

Step 4:  Add a layer mask to the first layer by pressing that little square with the circle in it at the bottom of your layers palette.

Step 5:  Next above the layers where it says adjustments, beside it says masks...click it....then go down to invert and click that. This will invert your mask that you added earlier. You will notice that the square on your layers palette went from white to black.

It should look like the original now.

Step 6:  Select a soft round brush with the color white selected at opacity 100%. Note: Did you know that you could change between your foreground and background color by hitting the "X" key?

Step 7: Now, making sure that the layer mask is selected ...simply paint where you would like your new background.

Continue painting all over your background until its completely covered making sure not to paint over your subject. See how any stray hairs are not disappearing? Cool huh?  Now if you mess up and accidentally paint over your subject do not result to the undo button. Simply press that "x" key changing your color to black and paint over where you accidentally painted. Tada! All fixed! Just make sure to switch back to white to finish painting your background. It should look something like this:

Now if you want to fine tune your painting you can press the ALT key and click on your layer mask. This will show you your exactly what you missed and painted.

Now on mine you can see the black spots where I missed, so now I will paint with the white brush and fix my missed spots! Then press the ALT key and click the layer mask to turn it back to normal!

Step 8: Now is the time to do any adjustments to your background. You can make it lighter or whatever you would like. If you want to make adjustments to the entire image subject and background you are fine go about it normally. But, for mine I think my background is a little to dark. So, I am going to just make adjustments to only my background. To do this, I make my adjustments while only paying attention to the background. Then after I am done with each adjustment I am going to add a clipping mask to the layer by hitting the ALT key and clicking the line in between my adjustment and my new background. Your subject, or original you will go back to normal then.

  Step 9: Now if you want to make separate adjustments to your subject click on the original and/or background layer and make your adjustments. Because this layer is under your new background it will only change the original image and not the background too.

For mine I just did some slight curve adjustments, got the red/pink tones out of her face by adjusting the saturation, and then adjusted my levels a little. Then I did a little burning to add a slight shadow.

Step 10: At this point you are done, you can flatten the image, save it and TA DA!!! Or, you can do any other editing that you want, add vignetting, or other effects to the image then flatten and save!

Yay for easy background replacement! :) Any questions let me know! I will be happy to help!