Make something transparent in photoshop?

Question

I have a picture with a cake in the center and i have the cake lassoed but I need the part surrounding the cake to be transparent. Is there an easy way to do this? I can't find it in my "Photoshop for Dummies" book...

Answer 1

After you select the cake, choose Select>Inverse. Then hit the delete key on your keyboard. Then choose Select>Deselect. This will make everything in that layer besides your cake transparent. Just make sure to go to the layers box and click off all the eye icons on all the layers except on your cake layer.

If you don't know how to utilize the layers box the best Example I can give is for you to start a brand new document then click on the layers box. Next go to Layer>New>Layer. Then open your cake. Copy it and paste it into your new document. You now have three layers. Select a part of it, doesn't matter, this is just an example. then do what I told you above to crop it for transparency. then on the layer labels background click the little eye icon on the left of it. You will now see grey and white checkers around your cropped picture, that is the transparency.

save it as a gif filetype if you wish to keep the transparency. Otherwise select your transparent image with all other layers hidden. With your cake layer selected choose edit>copy. Then paste it to another document in photoshop.

Answer 2

Another way you can do this, is go to select>select all. Then, edit>copy. Now go to File>new... and it should already have the exact size of what you just copied... but if not... punch in the size of your image.  Then, once that is open, click on edit>paste.  

Now, with you having layers here... you have the option to change the opacity to make it more transparent.  

Thanks for reading!