I have been doing an assortment of design projects for dozens of smalls businesses and clients through the years. Going on 5 years now solid running my own business from my home doing anything from photography, graphic design, web design, website development, social media management and more.
I wouldn’t call myself a connoisseur, but I do know what I am doing most days. I dabble in code when I need to, but otherwise, the knowledge I have is JUST enough for me to be able to help small businesses with the tech and online side of their business, the areas that end up being a major headache for most people!
I learned most my photoshop skills simply through running a professional photography business since about 2010. Without diving into my entire story of how my business grew to web design and mixed media, we’ll just say my skills grew and spread in all directions so I had my hands in just about everything.
More often than now, no matter the project i’m handed, I need branding and company logos. everything you post should be branded somewhere. I mean this is small business 101 right?
Whenever I request these files from clients, I bet 80% of the files I receive back jpegs and have a white background. If the background isn’t white, it’s another color that matches the brand. it is RARELY transparent. Without having to force my work to be delayed, rather than asking my client to get the right file type with a transparent background, I just do it myself. It takes time on my end, but I assure you it is less time than making my client track down someone who knows how. up until today, my method of removing the clunky background was tedious. using a tool to select individual portions, accidentally grabbing too much or highlighting a letter by accident, having to all over etc.. Thank goodness for this photoshop hack because it will easily save me 30 minutes of headache when the next jpeg logo shows up in my email!
Here are some exampled of what i’m referring to when I say a logo with a “transparent background” vs color.
Here is a good example of the need to simply remove a single color from a logo or vector file. It wasn’t that the background needed to be transparent, as it already was, but the editor used to make the logo was limited. In order to achieve a “stamped” look, we had to use free splatter icons in layers to make the text look rugged. SO while the image was on a transparent PNG, the splatter icons remained a part of the overall logo, which was not intended. This method of removing a single color in one swift move works great in this case as well as you’ll see in the tutorial video.
Feel free to leave comments on how YOU modify and upgrade logos big and small!
