You’ve got a photo that you’d love to use, but need to take out its background. Shouldn’t be so hard, right? Well, it’s not, assuming you have an image editor installed on your computer. But then, we all don’t have Photoshop installed, and even if we did, it’d still take several steps to knock out the background and get the isolated image you want.
That’s where Clipping Magic comes in. It’s a web app that does one thing well: taking the background out of your images. What was once a complex tool that required expensive software is now something anyone with a browser can do in seconds.
Magical Clipping
Clipping Magic is a web app that’s amazingly free, especially considering that its competitors are several hundred dollar image editors. All you’ll need to do is drag-and-drop your image into the browser to get started. Once this is done, the image is loaded and displayed in two instances in the interface, one shows you the original image while the other is the edited one without a background. The top row of buttons that appear on the interface start with three marker options: red, green, and erase. By choosing these markers (the red and green ones) you can mark which sections of your image you want included in your result and which sections (the background) you want excluded in your result. The size of these markers can be set using the same row of buttons.
You use the markers on the left instance of the image. Simply use the red marker to mark sections you want removed and use the green marker to mark sections that you want included in the image. The eraser marker can be used to remove the green and red sections that you have marked.
As you can see in the image above, a yellow line is shown that indicates which regions have been marked by the application. This region is determined by the spots that you have used the markers on. In order to better refine the boundaries of this yellow line section, you can opt to use the Refine menu from the top row of buttons. By default, it is set to automatic but if you wish to refine the edges manually, you can do that as well.
As you keep on using the image, its real time preview is displayed in the right instance of the image. Here you can clearly see what you are doing right or wrong and which edits should you make or revert.
In order to further enhance the image, you can zoom in (as much as you want) and make sure that the selected part is as accurate as you want it to be. The smallest brush size is of 10px and if you think it may not be the best size for you to select small areas from any image, just zoom in as much as you want. The brush is relatively smaller in the zoomed in more.
When you are done editing your image, you can click on the Download button from the top row of buttons in the interface. This prepares your resultant image and makes a mini window appear with a Download Result button.
Clicking this Download Result button begins the download of your resultant image in the PNG file format.
The Verdict
Not only is Clipping Magic absolutely free to use, but it also an absolute charm to use! Having a web app that offers a mighty useful function like this is hard to come. It might take some time for a new user to get used to ClippingMagic’s interface but once you do, it hardly takes a few minutes to remove the background from any image. Like every other service, ClippingMagic has a limitation as well. The default brush sizes provided by the application may be enough for the majority of images but there should be a brush size control as well.
In conclusion, bookmark Clipping Magic and visit the site any time that you want your image’s backgrounds removed: you will definitely be left satisfied with the results! Do share with us your opinion about ClippingMagic in the comments below.