7/27/2012

Photo Editing Tricks - Removing A Background

By Dan Feilman




Background Removal refers to the removal of the background or the backdrop of the picture wherein the object/objects are placed. While removing the background, the entire background or merely parts of the background we desire can be removed.

The advent of digital photography and its accompanying technologies has made background removal an easy editing fix. Before such capabilities were available, background removal of a photograph was a more difficult process.

In those pre-digital days background removal was done in the darkroom with the essential ambient conditions to include the correct room temperature. The film was submerged in a working solution and had to be constantly monitored. Background blur and decrease in resolution was achieved through overexposure of the film to the solution.

Today, background removal is possible using any digital photo editing software like Image Manipulation Program, GNU, or GIMP. GIMP is a special kind of graphics editing program able to support some types of object-based (or vector) graphics.

The digital editing software you use for background removal does not have to be able to support all kinds of object-oriented graphics. GIMP however offers the advantage of easy vector to raster conversion.

Other widely used raster graphics editors and digital photo editors will also work well. Most digital photo editors are equipped with a number of plug-ins which can adjust the background in various ways. Plug-ins are computer programs with specifically dedicated purposes. Most sophisticated photo editing programs use special purpose plug-ins and will execute background editing and removal based on different criteria.

Objects without backgrounds gain a new sense of versatility and purpose. They can be placed in a new backdrop, even in a new situational context. An example would be to remove the dining room backdrop of a flower vase and replace the background with that of a hotel lobby. The object can also be moved around in any way and you can change its alignment with the new background.

An object can gain a new sense of purpose without changing itself at all. It retains all of its properties like shape and size but becomes moldable to individual usage.




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