Adobe Photoshop Tutorial: Using A Photo As Its Own Background

Step 3: Sample A Color From The Image To Use For The Background

Let's create our background. First, click on the middle layer in the Layers palette to select it:

We need to sample a color from the image which we're going to use to colorize the background. To do that, grab the Eyedropper Tool from the Tools palette, or press I on your keyboard to quickly select it:

Then, with the Eyedropper Tool selected, click on an area inside your image which contains the color you want to use for your background. I'm going to sample a color from the woman's cheek, which should work nicely:

You'll see the color appear as your Foreground color in the Tools palette:

Step 4: Colorize The Background Using A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer

Now that we have our sampled color, let's use it to colorize the background. Click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Then select Hue/Saturation from the list:

This brings up Photoshop's "Hue/Saturation" dialog box. There's no need to fumble around with any sliders here trying to pick a color because we've already chosen the color we want to use, so all we need to do is select the Colorize option in the bottom right corner of the dialog box:

As soon as you select that option, Photoshop goes ahead and colorizes the image using the sampled color:

I'm going to boost the saturation of the color by dragging the Saturation slider to the right until the saturation value is at 50. Then, to give the background a washed-out appearance, I'm going to drag the Lightness slider to the right to a value of around 75:

Click OK when you're done to exit out of the dialog box. Here's my image after being colorized and lightened:

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