You just finished scanning an illustration that’s on a piece of white paper, or you snapped a picture of it with your phone and opened it in Photoshop. Now you want to overlay the illustration on another image without the white paper showing. Maybe you reached for the Magic Wand, the Quick Selection tool, or even the Color Range command (if you’re smart). You don’t need any of those. All you need to do is use the layer blending modes in Photoshop to make the white disappear, showing only your inscriptions on the paper. Choose the layer with the image on it and look in the Layers panel where it says Normal. Open that menu and use either Darken or Multiply, depending on which looks best to you (usually Darken).

This tip previously appeared in Colin Smith’s Photoshop Tips column, in the April, 2019 issue of Photoshop User magazine.