There’s a pretty cool website out there that some of you photo junkies might want to check out. The site allows you to easily remove the background from your photos to create masks, cutout or clipping paths without the knowledge of knowing how to use Photoshop or having Photoshop itself.
The website is Clippingmagic.com and it works like so: Simply upload your image, then mark it using green (for the foreground) and red (for the background) and boom! You will have your isolated image.
I wanted to give this a try, so I used a photo of Waitsfield pup Maya, laying on a busy rug. I marked her with green and marked the rug with red. The result was OK — a little choppy around her long fur, but it wasn’t horrible. I did read on their site that “hair and other partially transparent things such as veils or sheer clothes are not currently handled. This leads to bob-ish “cropped hairstyles in the result.” Something to keep in mind…
I wanted to try one more, so I used a photo of a MacBook Air sitting on a table — something that I knew would be a little easier to isolate. It produced a much better result than the shaggy dog I tried before. This process works better if your subject is on a fairly simple background (i.e. a person standing against a one color wall).
The bottom line is that you can remove the background from a photo in Photoshop, but not everyone has that software or knows how to use it. This is a great fast and easy solution for people who might want to isolate the subject of a certain photo (bloggers, take note!).
This site only works with Google Chrome and Firefox at the moment (sorry, Safari users). Hop on one of those browsers and give it a try!