A Transparent Solution

"When I scan clipart, say black line art as a TIFF or even a JPEG, how can I get it to place on top of a photo without a background? All my cliparts have a white background that covers up the photo!"

What you have is a transparency problem. The clipart is showing up white because the background is white. You have to make it transparent before you can drop it on top of another picture. Here's how:

Step 1. If you scan your image as line art, it may come into Photoshop as a bitmap (.bmp). If that happens, convert it to Grayscale by going to Image > Mode > Grayscale.

Step 2. Double-click the Background Layer to get the New Layer dialogue box. You want to change the name of the Background Layer so it's no longer locked, so just click OK to rename it Layer 0:

Step 3. Then go to Select > Color Range. Use the dropper to click on your clipart's white background, and adjust the Fuzziness slider to make sure your clipart is properly selected. Click OK:

Step 4. Go to Edit > Cut. Now you've got some clipart with gray-and-white checkers in the background (everywhere there's checkers, there's transparency). So now if you drag the art onto another photo, there will be no white background:

Hope that helps, and good luck

This and many more good tips are provided by Debbie Grossman, imaging guru and picture editor extraordinaire, at http://debbie.popphoto.com/

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