With the help of a little Affinity Photo magic, you can remove the background from any photo, and set your subject in a new scene.
Step 0: Downloading the Images
For this tutorial, we’ll be using this moon. You’ll also need an image to replace the moon’s background. For this tutorial, we’ll use this field.
In addition to this written tutorial, you can also watch our video tutorial on removing backgrounds.
Step 1: Select the Moon
First, open both images in Affinity Photo.
Then we’ll work on selecting the moon.
In Affinity, there are many ways to select objects. For this picture, the easiest tool to use is the Flood Select Tool. The Flood Select Tool selects pixels that have a similar color to whatever you click on.
The Flood Select Tool selects pixels that have a similar color to whatever you click on.
In the Context Toolbar (the menu at the top of Affinity Photo), make sure your Tolerance is set to around 10%, and you have Contiguous turned on.
Now if we click anywhere in the sky, then the entire sky will be selected, since it’s all the same color.
But we want to select the moon, not the sky, so we’ll need to invert our selection.
To invert a selection, press Command Shift I (Mac) or Control Shift I (PC).
Now that we have the moon selected, we’re going to duplicate the moon onto its own layer.
To do this, press Command J (Mac) or Control J (PC).
If we turn off the original layer, we can see that we’ve separated the moon from its background.
To get rid of the selection that’s going around the moon, press Command D (Mac) or Control D (PC).
Step 2: Colored Background
Next, let’s learn how to add a colored background to our image.
First, add a new Pixel Layer from the Layers Panel.
We’ll use this Pixel Layer to make a new background for the moon.
To do this, we’ll need to place the Pixel Layer beneath the moon’s layer. Click and drag the Pixel Layer to the bottom of the layers stack.
To fill this Pixel Layer with a color, go to the top of the screen to Edit, then Fill.
This has added a default white background to the picture, but we can change the color from the Dialog Box.
Change the color, then press Apply.
Step 3: Field Background
Finally, let’s try adding the moon to our photo of the field.
First, click on the moon’s layer to select it.
Then press Command C (Mac) or Control C (PC) to copy the moon.
Now go to the field photo’s tab.
Press Command V (Mac) or Control V (PC) to paste the moon.
The moon is now on a new background. We can move, resize, and adjust the moon by using the Move Tool.
Click anywhere off of the canvas to deselect the moon.
Nice work, friends! You did it!
If you want to make the moon match the background more realistically, you will need to use a few adjustment layers. I recommend you watch our tutorial on adding stars to a night sky to see an example of how to do this. 🙂