Erasing backgrounds

This feature is particularly good for removing or changing the background behind complex shapes such as fur, hair, trees etc, that would be tedious, or impossible to mask manually. You only need to indicate the approximate areas to erase (with the Eraser tool) and the areas to protect (with the Mask Painter Tool), and then click the 'Erase background' button.

1.	Use the Eraser Tool to roughly paint over the parts of the picture you want to erase (the background).
2.	Select the Mask Painter Tool and paint over some of the parts of the foreground you want to keep.
3.	Select the Eraser Tool again and then click on Erase background on the top InfoBar.

If the foreground is all a similar color you only need to cover part of it with the mask. If the foreground has differing colors, then paint the mask over each of the differing color areas. Use zoom (Ctrl+mouse wheel) to mask more or less detail and try not to mask over any background color or regions.

If you make a mistake hold Shift to un-paint the mask. If you aren't happy with the results you can Undo (Ctrl+Z) and change the mask, or the erased parts, and try again. In this way you can gradually improve the result by undoing, adjusting the mask and erased parts of the image then pressing Erase Background again. To improve the results for a particular part of an image, make the masked and erased areas more accurately indicate the foreground and background in that part of the image, to improve the result in that area. There is also a handy ? button on the top InfoBar which you can click to show a step by step guide for this feature.

This image has a white background which you want to remove.

Use the Mask Painter tool to indicate the part of the image to you want to protect (pink area).

Then use the Eraser tool to roughly mark the area you want to remove (white area).

Click on the Erase Background button on the Eraser tool InfoBar and the white area disappears.

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