Clear backgrounds making selection black not white

[Ben Kingery]

I am having some trouble clearing out the backgrounds of certain images. I'm taking images and want to quickly delete out any pixels not on the product I'm shooting (make all pixels white). Once I have my selection I go to "Edit" and then "Clear". Instead of making the selection white, it makes the entire selection black.

I'm new and lame at photoshop. Anything someone can do to help?

Thanks in advance.

 

[ibclare]

that is because you need to make your background into a transparent layer. Otherwise you will fill the empty space with the BG color black. To make your BG layer into transparent layer, double click on the layer and you'll get dialogue box and option to name the layer. Or hold alt and dbl click and it will become layer skipping the dialogue box. Anymore questions, just ask.
uh,
But you said you want to make the selection -- I presume you mean BG to the object -- white. In that case just be sure your BG color is white. Hit the "D" key to set color to default.

 

[Ben Kingery]

Perfect. It was the default color that needed to be changed.

Thanks again.

 

[ibclare]

You're welcome. Thank you for coming back to let me know if it worked or not. That is very good etiquette and serves one well if they come back. So come back, learn, and have fun. We have weekly challenges right now, projects to produce an effect or learn a technique and it's great to see all the contributions.