Help separating a picture from its background?

[crdean1]

My wife is looking to add the attached picture to the bottom of a wedding shower invitation, but the paper is lavender. How do I move the actual image to a blank canvas.

Right now, a white square is showing up around the image. Would I use something like Photoshop?

 

[bocomo]

My wife is looking to add the attached picture to the bottom of a wedding shower invitation, but the paper is lavender. How do I move the actual image to a blank canvas.

Right now, a white square is showing up around the image. Would I use something like Photoshop?

what you need is a transparent background, not a white one

in photoshop, use the magic wand to select the white space and then delete it

then you have to save the file in a type that supports transparency, like .png

 

[crdean1]

Easy enough. Thank you for the reply. I'll try it out.

 

[Mal]

Actually, you might save yourself some time with that one by using Preview's Instant Alpha feature. It's just kinda hidden.

Open the picture in Preview, click and hold on the selection tool in the toolbar, and choose Instant Alpha. Then just click and drag in the background until the background and only the background is highlighted (hold option to select non-contiguous areas, btw, just found that out today [EDIT: Sorry, that actually didn't work this time, don't know why]). I've found for simpler shapes it works wonderfully.

jW