This allows you to sample a foreground color (hold Alt/Opt to sample a color from your image) that Photoshop will not erase when using the Background Eraser Tool. Here’s an example of how this option works:

Step 6: Different Background colors

After you used the Background Eraser Tool in your whole image for one color, you should have something like this:

Even though my background was pretty much all blue, it has different tones of blue, and even some whites in it. To deal with that, you just have to sample a new color and repeat the process all over. You could also select the “Sampling Continous” option in the top panel:

But I don’t recommend that because if you come too close to your subject (in this case the trees) you may sample their color by accident and end up erasing parts of the image that you didn’t wanted to erase. So just aim the crosshair of our mouse into another color and repeat the same process until our image is fully cleared.

Step 7: Final step

After erasing the background you have two choices, you can either select the subject you just extracted and use it in a photo manipulation project, or you could replace the background you just deleted with something new to create a different image (that’s what we’re going to do). Download the sky gradient pack and chose the best one for your image. I chose to replace my old background with this blue sky:

And this is the result:

Final Results

Tutorial by Guilherme Pejon

Thanks for following this quick tip, I hope you incorporate this technique into your bag of tricks and that it makes your life easier from now on. Make sure you check my DeviantART and I’ll see you on another tutorial soon.

Guilherme Pejon