Is there a way to select part of an image, and crop all that isn't selected?

Question

I'm trying to use photoshop to put an image on top of another. The picture is of some black sunglasses I want to put on a picture of someone. The problem is, the sunglasses are set on a white square that completely cover's the person's face. I've tried cropping, but I can't find (after a while searching the web) a way to select the image and crop the rest of the parts away, leaving nothing but the sunglasses. All the thing's i've tried so far crop away the sunglasses leaving the white background, or does not fit into the sunglasses shape.

I remember seeing someone do it in a video before, but I can't for the life of me figure out how.

Answer 1

If i understand you correctly:

• Open the sunglasses image in its own ps file
• Make sure the background is set to transparent
• Use the wand and select all that is white (you can right-click and select "similar"
• Delete
• Copy and paste this image into the other (which then is in
  another PS file.

Or did i misunderstand?

Answer 2

After making your selection around the sunglasses you need to Invert it by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+I (or the equivalent on Mac systems). Alternatively you can go to Select > Inverse in the top menu instead of pressing the keyboard shortcut.

I would also recommend Masking the background rather than deleting it by going to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide Selection in the top menu. That way you can edit the mask at a later date if you need to tweak any bits, like if you cut away slightly more than you meant to, or if you need to cut the sunglasses out again in future.

Generally, it's better to use a non-destructive method such as masking to remove a background, rather than deleting/erasing.

Answer 3

Just to add another way to do it.

If the sunglasses are mainly black, or they do not have too much white or light colors, then you can simply select the layer where the sunglasses are and have it applied as Multiply.

For this to work, the sunglasses layer must be on top of where you want them to show up.

The images used within the Photoshop project are from Google. They are not mine; I am using them for demonstration only.