change background of photo

[KRISHNAN]

I have this photo of my brother - In - Law with me. I want to change the background to white. can anyone assist. I have never done it before. I have picasa 2 but not sure how it can be done using this software.

[pepe]

I'm not sure how picasa works, but a free photo editing software is gimp. www.gimp.org. It works a lot like photoshop. Once that is installed, you use the lasso tool and click on the edge of the image, make sure to click all the way around and reconnet the starting point and the ending point. THen click copy, paste (edit), and new layer(tool bar bottom left-looks like a piece of paper).
Then you can add a 2nd new layer and fill it w/ what you want. that's the basic. There are some great tuts out there if you google background extraction gimp.
Cheers

[RoyL]

Just downloading Picasa as nobody seems to have answered this for you.

Just downloaded and installed Picasa 3 as this is the newest version and only one I could get. My advice, unInstall it and get something decent, there is very little editing tools.

Try this one, Vicman's. The site also has a load of other related software and all of it is free. Here is the link

http://www.vicman.net/vcwphoto/

Vicman's has a lot of features not found in a few editors. You can also use Layers which is a bonus once you know how to use them. There are also heaps of tutorials on the software.

The suggestion to use the Gimp is ok if you are experienced with photo editing. It is a bit overbearing for some users and really is nothing like Photoshop at all.

Once you have a reasonable editor then it is easy to change the background.

I loaded Vicman's with a copy of your image, used the Magic Wand tool to select the background and then applied a new color. Took about 10 seconds. To make a good selection you would also want to feather the selection so that it blends back better.

[dseymour]

I used photoshop CS4, but most basic image editors will work. GIMP will probably have most of these options located in roughly the same place.

First thing I normally do is go to "Image>Image Size" and double the resolution when I work with pictures off the web.

What I did was I used the pen tool and went around the portrait, and made a selection by right clicking, and hitting "Make Selection" and hit ok. [Tutorial Here]

After that, I selected the inverse by hitting"Command+Shift+I". Then I expanded the selection by 1 pixel by going to "Select>Modify>Expand" and clicked. I entered "1" in the dialog box, and hit ok.


Then I grabbed the paint bucket tool and filled it in with white.

Try it yourself if you can, but here's my copy.

[Invalid]

Isn't this in the wrong section?