Modifying a picture to make it look just right is not as easy as some might think. In fact, it could be an arduous task especially if the photo editor does not have the appropriate tools and the required skills and techniques.  Amongst the many techniques made available to the editor, the most widely used are Background Removal and Image Masking techniques.  To know more about these techniques, their pro’s and con’s, read on.

As mentioned, Image Masking is a popular technique used by many image editors.  As the name implies, it involves masking a particular section of your picture with the use of a layer of black and white pixels.  The preferred area is then sliced out of the image.  Sounds easy, isn’t it? Well, it is, as compared to other techniques that require a lot more time to get the same results.

Using the right tools from Photoshop, you can eliminate any unwanted background.  Some of these tools are Magic Wand, Quick masking and Magnetic Lasso.  Likewise, there are a number of tools you can employ for masking, such as Photoshop’s Collage masking and transparency masking, as well as alpha channel masking, and many more.

The Background Removal technique, on the other hand, is quite similar to eliminating unwanted background using the Magic Wand tool in Photoshop.  The Magic Wand will remove a rough selection of the undesired background.  To do this, you must first select the Magic Wand icon.  Place the cursor on the image then hold the shift key while dragging the mouse to select the portion that you want to remove.  You will see that the section selected is not very “clean”.  You can remedy this by using some other tools available in the application.