: How does one turn a white background transparent in Photoshop but keep transparency? In this image, I want to keep the drop shadow, but not the white background.

@Sent7350415

Actually I've found the best way to do this is to select all colour to be removed with the magic wand tool. You don't need to be too pedantic at this step, just make sure you get all of the large areas.

Next, invert the selection (Ctrl + Shift + I on Windows), then from the 'Select' menu, choose "Refine Edge...".

In the Refine edge dialog, I found the "View mode" thumbnail "On Layers" to be the most clear.

Tweak the other settings, making sure you choose the "Output to" to whatever you're after, I went with "New layer with layer mask", and 'Ok'. Voila, pretty much perfect removal.

Also, I found the best way to see my refined selection was to have a solid fill colour layer beneath the image you're removing colour from (I was removing white, so my layer was black).

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@Jessie844

You can remove the white background layer by selecting the white area with the magic wand tool and deleting it. Hope it works.

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@Candy945

This is what I enden up doing instead after lots and lots of trial and error.

Duplicate the layer with the paper in it.
Invert the new layer.
Painting the "paper-part" clear white

Using the inverted layer as a mask on the first layer.

Worked like a charm, perfect masking!

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