Sunday, October 5, 2008

Taking Away the Background

By David Peters

Removing the background of a photograph gives you great flexibility with your photograph. The nice thing about using your editing program is that while removing the background you can choose to do the entire background or merely parts of it to achieve your desired result.

Before the popularity of digital photography and editing software the process of removing the background from an image was an incredibly laborious process.

It was performed in a darkroom with the necessary ambient conditions including proper room temperature. The film was submerged in working solution and was monitored constantly. Overexposure of the film to the solution could result in an increase in background blur and decrease in resolution.

Now, background removal is done with any digital photo editing software like GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP. GIMP is a special type of graphics editing application that is able to support some types of object-oriented (or vector) graphics.

It is not necessary that the digital photo editing software used for background removal be able to support all types of object-oriented graphics.The advantage in using GIMP of course, is that it enables easy vector to raster conversion.

If you already have an existing program that supports raster graphics or another digital photo editor you like to use it will also work just fine. You will find that most digital photo editors have a variety of plug-ins which can be used to change the background in different ways. Software plug-ins are computer programs with highly specific purposes. Generally you will find that sophisticated photo editing programs use special purpose plug-ins and have the ability to perform background editing and removal based on different criteria.

Once the background is removed you will find that objects without backgrounds can be used in several different ways. You can place them in a new backdrop and in different situational contexts. For example, a couch in furniture showroom could have the furniture showroom replaced with an office. The object can be moved around any which way and its alignment with the new background can also be changed.

The interesting thing about an object without a background is that it retains all its properties like shape and size, but makes itself more flexible to individual usage.

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