Erase back ground or change a shade of color to white in photoshop

Question

I recently painted a card and scanned it into my computer. I want to be able to use it so I can print out more card with the design I hand created, but the background needs to be white or erased. Im having trouble changing the beige shade of the card to white or at least do something to only keep the green and pink shades. Does anyone have any suggestions or help on how to do this. I am attaching the image below. Thank you! Any ideas help!

Answer 1

Here is one approach:

1. Open your file in Photoshop
2. From the menu, Select/Color Range and you will see a screen like the one below
3. Click with the eyedropper on the card which will select most areas but not necessarily all
4. Holding the Shift key, click the eyedropper on other parts of the card
5. Make sure the options are set as shown in the image below
6. Click OK. Now you will have the painted areas selected
7. Press Ctrl-J to create a new layer with the selection
8. Turn off the layer below and you should see transparent background with your painting floating over it

You can now copy this new layer into a new document and save it with a new name in case you need to refer back to the scanned original. If you like, you can add a layer below your painting and fill it with white.

Answer 2

First go to the Channels panel and select the Blue channel by holding Ctrl/Cmd while clicking on the thumbnail in the channel panel:

You should see a marquee appear on the image.

Now on the Layers Panel click the icon at the bottom that looks like a black and white cookie:

That's for Adjustment Layers. Either Curves or Levels will work. I prefer Curves, so hit Curves

On the left side hit the eye dropper with the white liquid in it that looks like an eye dropper with white liquid in it:

Then click on the yellow.

The reason for the mask is to preserve as much of the color in the rest of the image as possible. If you want to preserve even more you could've duplicated the blue channel and then used Levels on that channel to darken it a bit before doing the curves adjustment on the entire image:

Can then move the White Point in a little to get rid of the remaining texture.