How To Use The Solid Colour Layer In Photoshop To Change Backgrounds

Last Updated on July 3, 2018

In this short Photoshop tutorial, I’ll show you how to make a solid colour layer. The solid color layer has many uses and I’ll show you just one of them now.

Quickly Changing A Background Colour In Photoshop Using A Solid Color Layer

The setup here is that I’m using an image of a purple car which has areas of transparency on the top layer.  Beneath that, I have a normal layer which is filled with yellow pixels.

1. In Photoshop, click on the Layer1 layer in the Layers panel to select it.

2. Click on Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer menu.

3. Choose Solid Color from that menu.

This will open the Colour Picker

4. I chose a blue colour and clicked OK.

A new layer called Color Fill 1 has appeared in Layers Panel. This layer has two thumbnails and a link symbol in the middle. The thumbnail on the left is a solid color fill. The white thumbnail on the right is a layer mask. Because the mask is white, you can see the solid color fill causes the whole image to turn blue.

5. Now we need to put the Solid Color layer underneath the car. Click on the new Color Fill 1 layer and drag it down below the Layer 0 (the car layer). Now the car is at the top of the stack in the Layers Palette and the background appears blue. Using this new layer it is now extremely easy to change the background colour easily and quickly.

6. In the Layers palette, double-click on the thumbnail on the left side of the Color Fill 1 layer. This will open the Color Picker again. Choose a new colour and notice the live preview of the colour changes to the layer. This is what makes it so good. Click OK when you find a colour you like.

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