Paint Shop Pro is a cheap alternative to Photoshop, and has much of the same features in regards to background removal. This portion of the tutorial will walk you through the process of removing the background from our image. If you have PSP 8, then I highly recommend looking in the help for information about the 'Background Eraser' tool included. This is a very handy tool which can save you lots of work! However, for this tutorial I will use a different method to remove the background, to ensure the content stays compatible with many versions of the software as well.

1.) To begin, launch Paint Shop Pro and then open up the image you wish to modify (FILE > OPEN).

2.) After the image opens, select the 'Freehand Selection Tool' located in the Tools toolbar. If you are unsure exactly where to find this tool, please refer to the PSP help file.

The FreeHand selection tool would be very tedious to work with, if you were responsible for manually tracing out the entire image without any assistance. However, there are four different Selection Types available for the freehand tool. The easiest to work with when tracing an image is the Smart Edge tool.

3.) Set the Selection Type to Smart Edge. There is also an Edge Seeker option, but I find the Smart Edge tool much easier to work with.

4.) Now comes the fun part! We are going to actually trace around the object we want to separate from the background. Before you start, it is wise to enable 'Anti-Alias' in the tool options to help reduce jagged edges. Now, simply left-click on the edge of the object where you want to start dragging, then drag along the edge a little ways, and release the mouse button. You will see a tiny selection path applied to the area you dragged your mouse over, and with all luck it will closely follow the edge of the object. It is important to only move a little ways each time before clicking to set the path, otherwise the accuracy will go down.

5.) After you release the mouse each time, a small path will form around the edge of the object, and you will then be able to continue moving the small selection box up and around the object. Continue to do so, and remember to click often so the path develops nicely around the object. It is OK if you mess up a little (as I did), we will fix that next. When you have traced around the entire image, Double-Click to create the actual selection.

If the selection is really off, you may wish to undo the process and trace the edges of the object again.

6.) Now, we will hide everything outside of the selection. To do so, from the File Menu select: Layers > New Mask Layer > Show Selection. The background will become transparent (checkered). You might notice its edges are jagged, we will fix that soon. But first, lets refine our selection.

7.) To add or remove certain parts of the image we cut out, first make sure you are on the Mask layer (which you should be if you followed step 6 above). Now, select Layers > View Overlay. If a message appears, press YES. The original background will re-appear, but it will have a reddish overlay to it. Press CTRL+D or from the File Menu choose 'Select > Select None' to deselect the cut-out object.

To refine the visible image, select the Paintbrush tool, then pick either black or white for the color. If you select black, you can draw on the red mask and it will ADD to it (which will in turn obscure more of the actual object). If you draw with a white, it will erase some of the mask making more of the image visible. All values in-between black and white will create a transparency effect (not normally what you want). You can, and should, use the zoom tools or your mouse wheel to ensure nothing gets added or removed that doesn't need to be.

8.) After the image has been refined to how you like it, select 'Layers > View Overlay' again so that the background is gone completely. My image looks currently looks like:

9.) Lets now merge the mask and object together. To do so, select Layers > Merge > Merge All (Flatten). The checkered background will be replaced by white.

10.) To get rid of the jagged edges, I selected the Magic Wand selection tool. Then, set the Feathering to a value between 1 and 3. Make sure 'Anti-Aliased' is enabled in the tool options. Now, click on the white background, and with all luck the selection will highlight everything around the object. Finally, press the delete key a couple of times, and it will soften the edges of the object.

NOTE: If you press the delete key and the background changes to a different color, simply change the 'background' color swatch to white and try again.

11.) You can now press CTRL+D to deselect the object. If you would still like to enhance the image, make sure the magic wand tool is selected and set the feather down to 0 pixels. Now click the background, and then invert the selection to re-select the object. You can then apply any of the effects, or copy the object to a new layer and place a different background under it! In this example, I added a simple drop-shadow. (Image has been resized to reduce file size).

Removing A Background With Adobe Photoshop!

Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard in graphic design and manipulation. However, the software is quite costly for the every-day user. If you do have a copy, then you will find a variety of ways to extract objects from their backgrounds. I will explain how to cut the image out in a similar fashion as explained for the Paint Shop Pro tutorials. If you are in the mode to experiment with some other background extraction utilities in Photoshop, then check out the Background Eraser Tool and the Extract filter in the help documentation.

1.) To begin, launch Photoshop and then open up the image you wish to modify (FILE > OPEN).

2.) After the image opens, select the 'Magnetic Lasso Tool' located in the Tools dialog box. If you are unsure exactly where to find this tool, please refer to the Photoshop help file.

The Magnetic Lasso Tool can intelligently determine the edge of an object, and wrap the selection around the edge pixels. This will greatly speed up the image tracing process, and will minimize the amount of additional work you need to do.

3.) Now lets trace around the part of the image that we want to separate from the background. Before you start, it is wise to enable 'Anti-Alias' in the tool options to help reduce jagged edges. Now, simply left-click on or near the edge of the object. Now (with the left-mouse button released), slowly drag the mouse around the outline of the object. As you drag around the object, points will be created every now and then to help shape the selection appropriately. When you reach the start of the selection again, double-click to create the actual selection around the object.

4.) From here, there are a variety of things we can do. For this tutorial, simply press CTRL+C to copy the selection (object). Now, press CTRL+N to create a new document. The dimensions should match that of the copied object. Click OK and a blank document window will appear. Make sure that the new document is active, then press CTRL+V to paste the selection into it. The reason we did all of this is so that the object gets its own layer.

5.) If you need to revise the selection, you can use the 'eraser' tool or any other tool available in Photoshop. If there are white pixels around the object, select Layer > Matting > Defringe. Then enter a pixel value in the box that appears (between 1 and 3), and click OK. All edge pixels will be blended with the object.

6.) All that is left is to add any layer styles (effects) that you wish. You can also select the 'background' layer and paste any image or fill it with any color that you wish the object to appear in front of. For this example, I simply added a drop-shadow effect. NOTE: If you plan on adding drop-shadows or other effects that require a bigger canvas size, you can 'Image > Canvas Size' and enter new dimensions there.