Sometimes the simplest image editing chores can hijack your day. How many times have you thought "I wish I could use that picture but get rid of the background". I've taken a few Photoshop classes, but can still waste hours refreshing my memory of various Photoshop tools through trial and error or YouTube tutorials. Now that Photoshop for Mac can only be rented per month from Adobe's Creative Cloud, casual users like me need to find another solution. The site AlternativeTo offers 56 crowdsourced software substitutes for Photoshop's many functions. Someday I will try out more of these. Right now, I strongly recommend Super PhotoCut as a fast, understandable tool for cleanly cutting out objects from backgrounds. Check out these results.
Here's CramLamb during a visit to Pittsburgh. What if he decides to leave this picture?
Open the Pittsburgh photo in Super PhotoCut. Move the blue box so that it encloses all of your target object. Select the "keep" marker (circle with + sign) and roughly highlight the areas you wish to keep in green. As you use the marker, CramLamb is quickly isolated against a transparent background. Cut it out! That was easy. Save the new file as a .jpg.
Use PowerPoint or some other photo editing tool to overlay CramLamb onto another photo background. New York, New York! (Follow CramLamb's Instagram account Instacram to see more of his adventures)
What if the object you wish to isolate does not have clear boundaries? Hair in the wind is challenging even for Photoshop's lasso or magic wand tools.
Initially Super PhotoCut guesses which part of the object should be kept.
Zoom in and make rough swipes with the green marker (keep) or red marker (delete) to confirm which parts of the photo to retain.
Zoom in even more, and limit the size of your marker point to fine tune your selection.
After 5 minutes work, the hair looks passable next to a forgiving dark background. You can buy Super PhotoCut with free tutorials from effectMattrix for $29.99 or purchase from the Mac App Store. However, if you can't go 5 minutes without flipping your hair and taking a photo, then maybe you should invest in an Adobe Cloud subscription and some intensive Photoshop classes.