An Introduction to the Background Eraser Tool

The Main Uses of the Background Eraser Tool

• Isolating parts of an image: The Background Eraser lets you isolate, extract, and edit parts of your image. You can then use the isolated parts in other images or work with those parts on their own. For instance, if you have a photo of a flock of birds flying against a blue sky, you can erase the sky and, in turn, isolate the birds. You can then place those birds against a different sky or make any additional edits you’d like.
• Removing the background from intricate foreground content: The Background Eraser makes it possible to remove the background from even the most intricate foreground image content without having to make dozens of individual selections. For instance, to isolate a tree from its background without using the Background Eraser tool, you’d likely do so by selecting each of the parts of the sky that are visible through the tree’s branches and then deleting those selected areas. This approach can require hundreds of selections and take hours to complete. With the Background Eraser tool, you can wipe away the background from behind the tree in just a few minutes without making a single selection.

How the Background Eraser Tool Works

1. When you mouse over your image with the Background Eraser tool active, the familiar Photoshop Brush tool’s cursor (a round circle) will appear but with one noticeable difference: it will have a crosshairs in the middle, which Photoshop calls the hot spot. The Background Eraser tool uses this hot spot to target the color of the background. Once you click on an area representative of the background, such as the bluest part of a sky, the Background Eraser tool seeks out that color and erases it as you drag the mouse elsewhere in the image. If there’s virtually no overlap in the colors that make up the main image content and the background content, you can simply click and drag wherever you’d like to eliminate the background. Photoshop will erase the background as you go.
2. More often, though, as you click and drag you’ll encounter some areas in which the Background Eraser tool makes mistakes. For instance, if you’re erasing the blue sky from a portrait of a family, the tool might also erase the blue parts of the family members’ eyes. The Background Eraser includes various options that make it possible to correct or avoid these errors.

Advantages of the Background Eraser Tool

• Magic Wand tool: The Magic Wand makes it easy to select with just one click parts of an image that contain similarly colored pixels. If you’re working with an image with an evenly colored background, such as a product shot against a seamless white backdrop, it will be faster to use the Magic Wand tool than the Background Eraser to delete the background. However, if the background has a wider range of tones and/or the main image content makes it difficult to select the entire background with just a few clicks, the Background Eraser tool is a better choice. For instance, if you’d like to remove the sky in a shot of a chain-link fence, you could use the Magic Wand to select every portion of sky that peeks through the fence’s dozens of openings, but it’d be much faster to use the Background Eraser tool instead.
• Extract Filter: The Extract Filter is a powerful way to select and isolate parts of an image with very fine edge detail, such as the body of a cat or a woman’s long, curly hair. If you’re looking to make these kinds of selections, the Extract Filter is your best choice. In most other instances, however, the Background Eraser will do a better and faster job of erasing the background from behind the main content of an image.
• Magic Eraser tool: The Magic Eraser enables you to erase an entire background in one click, but with a major catch—the background must be composed of one solid color. If the background color varies at all (even over just a few shades of the same color), your best bet is to use the Background Eraser tool instead.

How to Access the Background Eraser Tool

The Background Eraser tool is located in Photoshop’s Tools palette in the same button that houses the standard Eraser tool and the Magic Eraser tool. Its icon, , is a tiny eraser with scissors in the top left corner. If you don’t see the Background Eraser tool’s icon in the Tools palette, follow these steps to find it:

1. Click and hold on the icon of the Eraser tool or the Magic Eraser tool .
2. A submenu will appear to the right in which you can select the Background Eraser tool. (Alternatively, you can press Shift+E repeatedly to cycle through the three tools that share the Background Eraser tool’s spot in the Tools palette.)

The Background Eraser Toolbar

When you select the Background Eraser tool, the Background Eraser toolbar appears just under the main Photoshop toolbar at the top of your screen.