Images are an essential part of the Internet and therefore also of Internet marketing. However, not every photograph is suitable for sales purposes. For example, if the background doesn’t match the campaign or website, the background also distract from the actual product or what is happening in the foreground. In this blog we’ll tell how to remove background from your picture.
Importance of image quality in e-commerce and marketing
The visual presentation is just as important as the work you put into each product. This includes the background.
The first impression of your customer is created by the picture. Even if you think the facts in your sales copy are compelling enough, the impression of the image or photo will dominate. There is no better way for shoppers to get a feel for the item online. After all, touching and trying out is not possible.
Build trust in your brand with quality images
If you also use the images for SEO purposes, an attractive photo is even more important. Using image searches, search engines confront potential customers with a wealth of similar products. Sometimes a millisecond decides whether the customer scrolls further or clicks on your picture.
A high-quality image also makes the product appear more valuable to the customer. You create trust in your brand, your service and your product. Conversely, this means: If you do not invest care in the presentation, your target group may draw negative conclusions about your brand.
Disturbing details should be eliminated, especially in times when customers can zoom in closer to a product on a website. Even if these visual problems are only perceived subconsciously in the background, it is already one level of consciousness too many.
A professionally staged photo, on the other hand, can even lead to distribution on blogs or social media channels. Occasionally even influencers want to use well-presented images of certain brands for their purposes. A good basis for possibly negotiating a deal or a link to your own website or sales page.
White Background – claims of major marketplaces such as eBay or Amazon and media sites
However, clean background is not only advantageous for aesthetic reasons. E-commerce platforms such as Amazon or eBay have now enforced strict guidelines regarding product presentations. And these are, after all, two important Internet marketplaces for online trading.
For example, a product image on Amazon must not contain any props that could mislead the consumer. Watermarks and logos also violate Amazon’s policies. The product must also take up 85 percent of the image area. The background must be completely white. eBay also requires you to remove unnecessary decorations from an image.
Violating these rules – even an inadvertent breach of the rules – can have serious consequences for your brand’s visibility. In the worst case, your product will no longer be listed.
Product images with a white background are also popular with media sites for promotional purposes. They can be better reconciled with the white backgrounds of the respective website: they do not disturb and do not distract from the content of the news article.
The good news is there are a number of tools to help you remove the background from your image. Software such as Photoshop, Powerpoint, or Snagit is ideal for this.
Background removal with Photoshop – these tools work best
As is so often the case with Photoshop, there are several ways to get there. You should consider the following methods for your editing:
| Paint brush | The brush is particularly useful for motifs where the edges are not clearly defined. This, along with the zoom, allows for precise editing that is more difficult with other tools. |
| Polygon-Lasso | If the motif is characterized by straight corners and edges, the work can be done quickly with the polygon lasso. |
| Quick Selection Tool | The best way to edit motifs with curves is to use the Quick Selection tool to erase the background. |
Processing with the brush – instructions
Brush editing is one of the more tedious methods of background removal. However, there is hardly a better way to carry out the necessary detailed work on more complex objects.
1) Open the image with Photoshop
First, open the Photoshop software and then the image to be edited. Click on “File” in the menu bar, then on “Open” and look for the relevant image.
Alternatively, you can simply drag and drop the image into the Photoshop window once you’ve opened it. It should then appear directly in the editing area.
2) “Rasterize” image
To edit an image, you should “rasterize” it, or convert it to the pixel level. Only if this requirement is met, you can edit the image with the Photoshop tools.
To do this, click on “Layer” in the menu bar. Then select “Smart Objects” and then “Convert to Smart Object”. If you now go back to the “Layer” menu item, you can select the “Rasterize” option.
3) Select the brush tool
Find the brush tool and click it. This is located in the toolbar, which is usually placed on the left side of the Photoshop window.
4) Change brush settings
Photoshop should now show the Brush tool in the top left corner. To the right of that is a dot with a number and a down arrow for a drop-down menu. Here you can set the size and hardness of the brush. Choose a hardness of 100 percent and the desired brush size. You can work on the larger areas faster with a large-area brush. For the details, it’s better to use a smaller, finer brush.
A little further to the right of these settings and the word “Mode” is another drop-down menu. Select the Erase option from here to turn the brush into an eraser tool.
5) Erase the background with a brush
Now you can use the brush and erase the background in bigger and smaller steps. To do this, hold down the mouse button and move the cursor or brush and move it over the areas to be removed.
For the hard-to-reach edges, you should zoom in very closely and use a small brush size to remove individual pixels. Depending on the image, this requires laborious and time-consuming detailed work. However, this is necessary in order to ultimately ensure a clean result that withstands the watchful and suspicious eyes of customers.
6) Save the image
Once you have finished editing, you can save the image in your desired file format. If you save the file in PNG format, you can keep the grid in the background and continue editing at any time.
Polygonal Lasso – instructions for motifs with straight corners and edges
The book that can be seen in the following pictures is characterized by clearly defined and straight edges and corners. It is therefore quicker and easier to separate it from the background using a polygonal lasso.
The following guide shows you how to do it:
1) Open the image with Photoshop
As with brush editing, you can reopen the image from the menu or drag and drop it into the workspace.
2) Rasterize the image
To enable editing with the polygon lasso, you should rasterize the image. To do this, go back to the “Layer” item in the main menu. Then select “Smart Objects” and “Convert to Smart Objects”.
In the next step, move the cursor back to the “Layer” menu item, then to the “Rasterize” option and finally click on “Smart Object”.
3) Zoom in on an object
As with the brush, you should also work as precisely as possible with the polygon lasso.
Enlarge the image section to be edited in order to capture the edges as precisely as possible. Alternatively, you can use the main menu to select “View” and later “Zoom in” and “Zoom out”.
Because the latter is a bit cumbersome, Photoshop also provides the key combination for zooming in and out in addition to these menu options. This way you don’t accidentally cut away an important part of the object. In addition, the result leaves nothing of the unwanted background.
4) Select Lasso tool
From the toolbar located on the left side of the Photoshop window, you can select the Lasso tool.
5) Use the Lasso tool
Now start marking the part of the image that you want to keep—in this case, the book. It is best to start at one of the corners by clicking on it with the drawn lasso.
From this point, you can drag the cursor either sideways or down. You don’t have to keep the mouse button pressed. The lasso follows you like a rope even without pressing a button. So it’s still flexible until you click a corner point again.
Then the lasso is fixed and you can go to the next corner in the same way. In this way, you move along the edge of the object from one corner to the next until you have clamped the entire object with it.
Finally, click once on the starting point with the lasso to complete the link. The entire object is now outlined with a flickering dashed marker. A small square icon should now appear next to the cursor.
6) Select the part of the image to remove
So that you don’t remove the subject of the picture (in this case the book) but the background, you need to invert the selection. To do this, go to the “Selection” option in the menu bar and then to “Invert the selection”. Photoshop now displays a flickering marker around the object and one that outlines the entire image. The background, i.e. between the book and the edge of the picture, now represents the selection that is to be removed.
7) Remove
Now is the time to remove the background. All you have to do is press the Delete key to make it disappear – or on the Mac, the key combination fn + backspace. The background is now just a patterned white.
Tip
Uncleanly cut edges and corners can easily be edited later with the Photoshop brush. It is a much more precise tool that allows you to remove individual pixels and thus small bits of background.
To do this, you should zoom in again as close as possible to the relevant area. Only in this way is it possible to erase the spots cleanly without catching parts of the object.
8) Save
Once you have removed the background to your liking, you can save the image. You can choose from any image format. Again, the grid remains in the PNG format.
Quick selection tool for roundness and irregularities
The curves of a more complex motif are difficult or impossible to outline with a lasso tool. You have a lot of tedious work ahead of you with the brush, too.
As the name suggests, the Quick Selection tool is a faster alternative. The following example will demonstrate this using a guitar.
1) Open the image, convert to a smart object, and rasterize
As already known, you should adapt the opened image for editing again using the menu items “Layer”, “Smart Objects” and “Convert to Smart Object”. Then select “Layer” from the menu again, and then select “Rasterize” and “Smart Object”.
2) Select Quick Selection Tool
The quick selection tool is just below the polygon lasso you used on angular objects. Click on the tool.
3) Select image areas to remove
The tool requires a little practice to be able to use it and do precise work. So start by deleting the larger areas first. Then you can always take care of the finer details.
The drop-down menu at the top left allows you to set the size of the tool. Adjust the corresponding values if you z. B. want to remove larger areas or smaller areas.
4) Deselect and make corrections
Especially with a little practice, you can mark an area that is too large and also contains parts of the object. If so, click the subtract from selection tool in the top left to adjust the highlight.
Training is also required here: it is best to stay in the area of the object that you want to preserve. At the same time, you should move as close to the outer edge as possible with the Cursor tool. Remember to use zoom and resize the tool to allow for more accurate correction.
If you want to cancel the entire selection again, you must right-click on the corresponding area. On the menu that appears, you can simply click “Deselect” and start selecting again.
5) Remove background
Once you have defined one or more areas, you can delete the background with the Delete key (or on Mac with the key combination fn + backspace). Here, too, you can use the brush to touch up uncleanly erased edges or gaps.
Erasing the background with Powerpoint
Don’t have Photoshop handy right now? If it is a high-contrast image with a background that is as monochromatic as possible, you can alternatively use PowerPoint. At least this allows for quick and easy processing. We will show you how to do this in the following instructions.
1) Open the image
Open the corresponding image with PowerPoint.
2) “Format picture” or “Crop”
Select the slide with the image and click on the item “Image format”, “Format image” or “Crop” in the menu bar. There should be another menu item on the top left labeled “Remove Background”.
PowerPoint automatically detects some areas that it considers to be the background and wants to remove. These are shown in pink. As you can see, there are also some areas that still belong to the object – e.g. B. the logo on the front, while the sockets in the background are not included.
3) Correct automatic work of Powerpoint
To correct these mistakes, PowerPoint gives you two tools to choose from in the top left menu bar: “Mark areas to keep” and “Mark areas to remove”.
First, use the cursor to mark all the areas you want to keep – all you have to do is draw a mark. Then you can take care of the areas that PowerPoint missed. This way you’ll be able to erase areas that you accidentally marked incorrectly yourself. Slowly approach a background-free image.
4) Remove the background
Once you’ve set all your markers for deletion, you can simply click anywhere on the slide. You should then see the end result in front of you.
5) Save the image
You can also simply save a PowerPoint image as a PNG file for later editing.
Remove background with Snagit
If you don’t have Photoshop or PowerPoint at your disposal, we would like to present you Snagit as a last alternative. You should also use this program for less complex motifs if possible. In fact, it is a rather simple software that cannot meet complicated and detailed requirements.
1) Open the image and adjust the canvas color
Open the image you want to edit in Snagit. If it’s not a PNG file, you should change the background or canvas color. This is necessary for processing. To do this, look for “Picture” and “Canvas Color…” in the menu bar on Windows or “Picture” and “Change Canvas Color…” on Mac. Here you should select the white variant with the check pattern.
2) Pick the right fill tool
You should now see several fill tools or schemes in several colors to the right of the image. Choose the white variant with the checked pattern here as well. Like the canvas color, this is a transparent color.
3) Remove the background
Now use the tool to click on the background that you want to erase.
4) Change properties of tools
For images where the background contains different tonal levels, as in this case, it is not as easy to erase it. As you can see, there are still residues that need to be removed.
Below the fill color menu is the tool properties menu. Adjust “Tolerance” and “Opacity” to get the desired result.
Again, a little finesse is required here. Otherwise, elements of the image that you did not intend to delete may disappear.
5) Save the image in PNG format
Save the picture as soon as you are satisfied.