Clipping service - recommendations

[Sally Dickson]

I am sorry is this is the wrong forum, I will also be posting it in the Ecommerce issues section.

Can anyone recommend an image clipping service, I have just spent 30 min looking through the options on Google and I am non the wiser.

So any names would be much welcome.

Thanks,

Sally Dickson

[jont]

Do you mean cropping?

Good open source tools include GIMP and Picassa (from Google) ... GIMP is very powerful and can handle most image editing needs .. and for free.

[Sally Dickson]

...Cropping I can manage.

Its removing less than perfect backgrounds from dozens of products that takes the time.

I read somewhere that sorting out images is one of those time-consuming headaches that it was better to outsource.

[jont]

Oh ok- there is no easy solution other than to photograph them against as white a background as possible and using the magic wand to select the background colour. I tend to place a light shining straight onto the background to ease removing the background - often if you can get it right there is no need to remove the background (assuming you want it white).

Your tools of choice in any image editing software are in order:

magic wand
colour range
lasso tool
pen

Most also have an extract facility where you draw around the border and fill the bit you want to retain and the program extract the content from the background - this can be with mixed results depending on the subject and contrast in the background.

I tend to favour the lasso tool for most of my background removals.