How To Extend A Background In Photoshop - Design & Illustration

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1. How to expand the image background in Photoshop with a solid color

For this tutorial, we'll be using:

Close Up Portrait and this picture of a young model with ice cream
Mount Agung Volcano at Sunrise
Traditional Norwegian Old Wooden Houses with Growing Grass on Roof

Step 1

Let's start learning to extend a picture background by opening our first image. Hit Control-O and select the picture.

Opening an image in Photoshop — We'll use Woman with Ice-cream to extend a photo background

Step 2

To extend the background of an image in Photoshop with a solid background, all you need to do is hit Alt-Control-C and change the Height to 3000 px, and then change the Canvas Extension Color to the color of your background using the Color Picker Tool.

Here's how our image should look after going through the first couple of steps to expand a photo background with a solid color:

Step 3

If you have lines where the colors don't match, you can fix them with the Spot Healing Brush Tool (J). Just paint over these lines with this tool to produce the result you want and expand the image background in Photoshop.

final image after using the spot healing brush tool

2. How to expand the background of an image in Photoshop using the Content-Aware Scale option

Step 1

Let's try another method to learn how to expand a background in Photoshop. Open your image and double-click on the Background layer to rasterize the layer.

Step 2

Then hit C to activate the Crop Tool.

activating the crop tool

Step 3

Drag the lines of the Crop Tool to extend the background as you need.

extending background in Photoshop with a crop tool

Step 4

Now press Alt-Shift-Control-C to activate the Content-Aware Scale tool. Hold Shift and drag the lines to extend the background of the image.

extending a background with content aware scale tool

This is how your image will look after you've gone through the steps to learn how to expand a background in Photoshop. If you want to adjust your image or learn what else you can do with the Crop Tool, read how to crop in Photoshop as well.

Step 5

Content Aware Scale is a great tool when you're working with landscape images, as it's okay if some natural elements such as water, grass, and bushes get stretched or squashed a bit, but I don't recommend using this method with portraits, as this can affect the facial proportions and give you results like this one:

why you should not use content aware with portraits

3. How to extend a background in Photoshop with the Image Extend add-on

Step 1

The previous technique can make some areas of your image look blurry, and you can lose the quality of your image. To avoid this, let's try the Image Extend add-on as we use Photoshop to extend the background of a photo. Open the image you want to use, and then go to Window > Extensions > Image Extend to open the add-on.

Step 2

Here you can choose which side of the background you want to extend and how many pixels you want to add. Let's put a tick on Content-Aware and then set all the sides to 200 px to extend a photo background.

Step 3

After that, just hit Extend and wait a little to extend the picture background.

You've learned how to expand a background in Photoshop

Here is our final result. Using these simple methods in Photoshop to extend the background of a photo, you can get the desired result for almost any image.

AI background extender using Envato AI ImageEdit

Envato's AI tools simplify the process of expanding background with AI by intelligently generating new, coherent content that's included in your subscription with unlimited use (this is not included on Enterprise plans). To utilize this feature, just open the desired image within Envato's AI ImageEdit platform and select the Expand tool.

Also, you can follow along with us over on our Envato Tuts+ YouTube Channel if you want to watch a step-by-step tutorial on how to extend a background in Photoshop:

Explore more awesome Photoshop resources

Once you've learned to expand a photo background, you may want to discover more Photoshop tips and tricks. If that's the case, check out these amazing tutorials: