Simply right-click the photo in its folder and select Duplicate.
Click Window > Zoom or use a trackpad gesture to zoom in. When you have tiny areas to get in between, use the Zoom tool for more accuracy.If you are not happy with what the tool is selecting, you can drag in the opposite direction or click another spot to stop the selection.Using either of the methods above, here are a few tips that may help you to remove a background in Preview. Whether you use this method to take the background out of the image or to copy what you want to keep and paste it elsewhere, it works. Open your image in Preview and do the following to extract an image.Ģ) On the far-left side, click the Selection Tools drop-down and pick Smart Lasso.ģ) Begin tracing the part of the photo you want to keep and finish by connecting your start and end points.Ĥ) When you see your selection, you can click Edit > Invert Selection and then your Delete key to remove the background or Edit > Copy to copy that selection and paste it elsewhere. In this case, it may be easier for you to take out the part of the photo you want to keep. This can make the above method more difficult. You may have a photograph that has many of the same colors in the background as in the section you want to keep. Once you remove the largest parts of the background, you can delete smaller sections that are closer to the part you want to keep by following the same steps. You can continue doing this until the entire background is removed. Stop dragging when you capture a section you’d like to remove and click your Delete key.ĥ) Follow the same steps 3 and 4 above to select additional sections of the background and delete them. But since this is unlikely, you can simply select it in sections. This is why using this method works better if your background is colored differently than the section you want to keep.Ĥ) You may be able to select the entire background in one fell swoop. The tool will automatically select pixels of adjacent matching colors as you drag. After that, open one in Preview.ġ) Click the Markup button in the Preview toolbar.Ģ) Toward the left side, click the Instant Alpha tool, which looks like a wand.ģ) Begin dragging through the background of your image. Tip: Select the image file and press Command + D to duplicate it. Open your image in Preview, and then follow these steps to remove the background. This first method works best if the background in your photo doesn’t blend in with or has different colors than the part of the photo you want to keep.
If you’d like to remove the background from an image using Preview on your Mac, this tutorial shows you two ways to do it.
#Free photo touch up app remove backgrounds imac mac#
The Preview app on Mac isn’t the best option for editing photos, but for simple things, it works. But because we’re not, the experts give us tools to use that make editing images a little bit easier. It would be wonderful if we could all be good at photo editing.