When I first started creating watercolors, I wondered how my favorite artists removed the textured background from around their paintings to make them usable for patterns and prints or cleaner looking for social media posts.
I searched for information and could only find drips and drabs–never a full tutorial. I thought there had to be an easy to way to do it (hint: not really) but everyone was keeping it a secret.
I had to take two paid courses to learn how to edit my watercolors and I still haven’t found high-quality free content that walks you through the entire process. So, I’m taking on the challenge!
If you want to learn how to remove the rough paper background from your watercolor paintings, I’m showing you the process today.
I edit my watercolors in Photoshop and most of the watercolor artists I know or asked or stalked online also use Photoshop. I’m sure there are other tools you could use, but this is the most popular one.
The only tools you’ll need for this process are a scanner and Photoshop.
Before you scroll through the steps below, I need to give you a warning: It looks complicated. It’s actually not very complex…it’s just time consuming. Once you do it a couple times, you’ll get the hang of it. But, the more intricate (and light in color) your painting, the more time it’ll take you to remove the background. Some paintings take hours but some paintings only take a handful of minutes.
Here’s my process:
Step 1: Scan the watercolor painting with my Epson Perfection V600 Scanner with the settings below.
Step 2: Make sure the image is clean.
Look for any dust, hair, dirt, etc. that could’ve gotten between the painting and the scanner when you scanned it in.
Step 3: Move the painting onto a new document using the lasso tool and crop it.
Create a new, large document with a white background (that you’ll delete later). Use the lasso tool to select your painting. Copy and paste it to the new document and crop it as close to the painting as possible.
Step 4: Brighten, adjust contrast, adjust colors, etc.
Step 5: Remove the background using the eraser tools.
Add a black rectangle. Try the magic eraser tool. Use the eraser tool to remove the rest of the background.
Step 6: Remove the rectangle and white background and save as a .png.
Final Image:
What a great tutorial! For sure I’ll put it into practice! Thanks April!
YAY…I’m glad it’s helpful!
Could you have used the regular eraser around the parts that got taken away with the magic eraser to protect them first and then used the magic eraser? Just wondering if it would have saved you a lot of time. This is very helpful.
No, it doesn’t work like that unfortunately. It “erases” everything that is similar in color, so it still erases that bit no matter what. I went in and tried it just in case and it still erased it. I wish!!! Those light colors make the magic erase tool impossible to use…otherwise it’s the best!
Too bad, that would save so much time. Thanks for checking it out!
You can use the magic wand and lower the tolerance setting to select the area you want to remove. If it still selects too much, you can use layer masks… then you can put back just the small areas that you need. It can save a good amount of time! Good luck.
Thank you!!!
You’re so welcome!
Love it! Thanks for the explanation as I always have to use the rubberin the end. Haven’t found anything better.
Hey April,
I loved this tutorial. I was looking for the exact thing for my watercolors. I use photoshop all the time and I admit, I was hoping it would be easier.
I wanted to offer two suggestions that might help save some time.
1. Try adjusting the tolerance on the magic eraser. You have it set at 32. A low tolerance erases pixels within a range of color values very similar to the pixel you click. A high tolerance extends the range of colors that will be erased.
2. If there are certain sections that are being erased (like your collection of paintings on the wall) lasso around them and cut/paste that area on to its own layer. Then go back to the original layer and use the magic eraser to do the heavy lifting. All you then have to do is go back to the other layers and do the fine detail work on much smaller pieces of the larger painting. This may not work in every instance, but it should work in a lot.
When scanning, what image format are you saving the original scan as? When you finish editing, what image format do you save as?