One of the most requested photo manipulations is removing the background from an image. There are many reasons why someone would want to remove the background from an image. We will uncover a few of them, but maybe even more importantly, we show you a few ways how to remove the background from an image yourself, or to hire someone who will remove the background from an image for you.
5 Reasons to remove the background from an image
Why would you want to remove the background from an image? Well, we’ve sum up five of the most common reasons for you to remove the image background.
1. To focus on the main products
If you have a picture with a subject on it and a busy background, this can be distracting. If you want to have customers to have focus on the product on the photo, then you need to remove the background. This is one of the main reasons why you don’t see backgrounds on product images in a webshop.
2. To comply to the marketplace guidelines of online retailers
Many e-commerce & online retailers, like Amazon, Ebay or Google shopping have set image guidelines. To comply to the guidelines the images need to have a white or transparent background and they need to be resized and aligned. That way the marketplace will have a consistant look and won’t stress your eyes.
3. For Photo Manipulation
If you are into photo manipulation, for example if you’re a matte artist, designer or photographer, then you can create stunning and jaw dropping effects. Imagine to take a picture of your kid in a space costume and edit the picture as of your kid is walking on the moon. Or a so-so wedding picture and change it from a rainy day to something amazing.
4. For easier Photo Editing
In some cases you need a blank canvas to be able to give special effects to an image. For example, if you want to add or edit shadows and reflections.
5. To add a more appealing or suitable background
A photo with a transparent background can easily be edited and given a more appealing or suitable background. You can re-use the same image multiple times and use it to pop out in an advertisement banner for example. Or to change the background according to the mood you want the image to have.
4 easy ways on how to remove the background from an image
In this section we’ll explain how to remove the background of an image. Covering how you can do it yourself in Photoshop, how you can use a Photoshop plugin to do the hard work, or how you can use an online background removal website or hire someone to do it professionally for you.
1. Do it yourself, using Photoshop
If you’ve got access to Photoshop, then you can use it to remove the background from your images in quite an easy way. Most people don’t know it, but there is a background remover hidden inside Photoshop!
For an easy tutorial on how to use this background removal tool, check out this video of PiXimperfect on Youtube.
As an alternative you can also use the Magic Wand tool in combination with the eraser tool can work miracles. However, the more complex the background, the more time-consuming it can be.
2. Use a Photoshop Addon to remove Backgrounds in Photoshop
If you don’t want to hassle around with brushes and seperate tools in Photoshop or if it doesn’t do the trick, you could consider using a Background Remover Addon for Photoshop.
On GraphicRiver (from Envato) there are offered a few. One of the most popular ones is the Intense Background Remover v5 that is $7 at the time of writing this article.
The tool has been sold almost 1500 times, rating almost 5 stars.
3. Use an online tool to Remove the Background of an Image
Removal Online Background Remover
There are quite some free and premium online tools available that can remove the background of an image. We like Removal.ai that offers a free version, but also offer a subscription if you want to remove backgrounds in bulk, or a plan where you pay for each image.
Removal.ai does what it promises and it offers some editing options to finalize the image in case the automatic removal missed a spot. You can also easily replace the background of the image or make other adjustments.
Slazzer Online Background Remover
An alternative to Removal.ai is Slazzer. Slazzer works like a charm and offers free background removal too. The automatic background remover works amazingly well!
Slazzer also offers desktop applications for batch processing of multiple images at a time, API access so you can easily integrate with any third-party application or website, and it supports up to 25-megapixel resolution.
Slazzer is offering a one year deal now on Appsumo where you can buy 100 credits for $8. Which is equavelant to $0.08 per image. This deal comes with API access and all other advantages. Compared to buying the credits on the the website itself it’s a discount of 26%!
4. Hire someone to remove Image Backgrounds
If you regulary have image backgrounds to be removed, why not hire someone for you to do this time consuming work? Especially if you have to remove dozens of backgrounds from images a day or week, this can save you hours of time and money.
We can highly recommend using the services of Fiverr, but you can also take a look at other freelance services. We selected 2 that has a great track record, so why not give them a try?
Juliaphoto Background Removal
Juliaphoto has an impressive track record. She is rated a whopping 5 stars out of 2230 reviews! Besides that, she’s also incredibly fast offering to deliver the images with a removed background in 3 hours. You can get the images back with a white a transparent background. Additionally she can create shadow, drop shadows or reflection shadows and convert it to other file formats.
CutoutImage Background Removal
CutoutImage is another experienced seller on Fiverr with over 5000 reviews and a rating of 5 stars! Besides removing backgrounds, he also offers retouching, adding shadows and image resizing.
The way you’ve organized this article is really amazing. Looking forward to getting a video tutorial for this one. But I usually don’t like the AI tools ‘cuz these all can’t remove background with perfection.
The post was awesome. I used to have a lot of trouble removing image background. But luckily I found background remover tools online. They have helped me a lot. After reading your post, I think I can remove the background image by myself. However, in times of need, the online background remover tool is still a top priority for me.