Removing the background of images

[NinjaNick]

Hello everyone, I apologize if this is in the wrong section of the forum and appreciate if the moderators decide to move it. I have the question of how to easily remove the background from images or make them transparent. Currently I know of two sites...

https://www.bonanza.com/background_burner and https://clippingmagic.com/

The second one is by far the best being very easy to use and very quick to delete any background. The only problem is the price point at $0.22 a picture it's not that cheap. The first is decent, it has more problems than the other but is free. If anyone knows of a better site to use or program I would highly appreciate it! Thank you!

 

[pichu655889]

I would recommend using Photoshop if you have access to it... but another alternative would be to use GIMP, an open-source image editor that you can get for free. I find Photoshop is more accurate but GIMP doesn't do too bad of a job either. Not too sure about automated web services though, I've never used them before so I can't help in that regard.

 

[Checkmate]

The 2nd looks exactly FluidMask - but it's a commercial software. There's crack version though.

 

[unownHGSS]

I'd recommend Photoshop as well. There are multiple ways to get rid of the background and I daresay you can get even cleaner and more precise cuts using Photoshop.
I've been using Photoshop for a while and I can give you some pointers if you decide to use it too.

 

[HatoriTakaya]

Like many others, I advise either Photoshop, GIMP and FluidMask to help remove the background. Personally I've used Photoshop more than any image manipulation and editing. In terms of other uses, I have used other software to achieve other results.

 

[mildis]

In the view point of performance and results of manips, photoshop is the best choice. But no ones mention the problems of photoshop. As an image processing application, Adobe photoshop is no doubt No.1 among other softwares. But there are these problems:

1] Photoshop is too expensive (pricely). If you are a student you can purchase it in Academic price (pretty cheap, but still pricely). But if you are not, you should purchase it in usual/normal price. I don't know recent price and features of photoshop. But price of photoshop is around $1,000 or over. One of the highest price application for personal usage. Photoshop is excellent, but too expensive.

1 addition] Possibly you cannot use cracked photoshop. (Adobe has been taking measures against unauthorized usage of photoshop fot these ten years or so. Cracked version may not work, I think).

2] Photoshop is not easy to use application. It features thousand or ten thousands image manips and processing functions. In a sense photoshop is equipped with "numerous" image processing functions and tools. Removing background is one function of photoshop. But Photoshop can do many other things, it has been designed for numerous types image processing. (Thus the price of photoshop is very expensive).

If you have no plan to do various image processing, but only to do removing background, photoshop is not proper. Reasons: Too expensive, Having too many features which you cannot imagine to use and will never use in future.

Try GIMP. (Or, other simple function free software). GIMP is free software. The person I know has been using GIMP to decensor, or for other similar purposes (including removal of background). The results are pretty good. (I, myself, have no experoences to use GIMP. But I had used other free soft.)

Photoshop is complicated, super-multi-function image processing software. (In addtion, super expensive software).


Addition: People seem to forget one thing. That is, you need Pen-Tablet for image manips. Without tablet, you cannot easily use even GIMP. The price of Tablet is about $100 (There are various types of Tablet. High spec tablets cost several hundreds dollars. $100 is the cheap, yet standard and practically usable tablet.


_ mrd

 

[Icecold]

Whichever one you try, they may look complicated at first, however there are plenty of tutorials online covering basic and advanced features. One that I'd recommend is 'You Suck at Photoshop'. (Yes, it really is called that).

There may be hundreds of buttons/options, but you only need to use a tiny fraction of them to remove backgrounds. Also, even if you got an old copy of Photoshop from 10 years ago, it is still a great and powerful program.

As for GIMP, aside from being free, I like that it is very compact - a small download and installs quickly.

 

[pichu655889]

Very true, Photoshop is very expensive if you were to procure it at its normal price. I managed to get the CS5 Creative Suite at a student price, which is approximately one-tenth the original price. If you have the means to obtain it I would recommend you do so.

While it is true that one can achieve better results with a tablet and pen (those Wacom tablets maybe) to someone like me who isn't really that involved with media and content creation it is a rather unnecessary cost. A bit of patience and a bit of practice should get you satisfactory results... at the very least something that isn't glaringly slipshod work.

 

[Arylin]

Possibly you cannot use cracked photoshop. (Adobe has been taking measures against unauthorized usage of photoshop fot these ten years or so. Cracked version may not work, I think).

I'm currently using a portable version of CS6 (previously CS4). Only weakness I've personally had is that there's an issue with the fonts being reset almost the moment I click on the list, which severely limits the types I can use. No idea how I'm going to fix that.

I agree with pichu655889 that a tablet and pen isn't that necessary if you aren't too involved in image manipulation. I'm glad that my results tend to be reduced in image size afterwards since I honestly don't take too much time to preserve every detail and delete every inch of background. If it looks good enough, I'm good to go.

 

[HatoriTakaya]

Well for Photoshop, if I remember correctly when I was removing backgrounds within a short amount of time. There was a magnet lacosse tool or something on those lines that can stick to certain parts of the image. Then you invert it and delete. However, the other tool was a magic wand. Can't remember if they were the correct name for the tools however.

But yes, Photoshop is expensive and you should only consider it if you plan to use it at a professional level. GIMP like I mentioned before can do the same thing for free and there's several others mentioned again that can compile the same results. And honestly, for the older CS suites, you never needed a tablet. However, it's only because Tablets become a convenient tool for a lot of people who deals with the Art side of things, they implemented it in their software to be up-to-date.