Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life
word has a great feature called
ground removal that can be used to
remove parts of your picture giving it a
transparent background not only is this
a useful tool it also opens up tons of
creative possibilities here's how it
works first make sure the image is
selected then click the remove
background command on the format tab
don't worry if the picture doesn't look
good yet because we're going to make a
few adjustments the first thing you
should do is click and drag the
selection handles so the foreground
areas are inside the box right now the
background areas are highlighted bright
pink or magenta but when we're done
they'll be removed from the image
altogether with some pictures word needs
a little help deciding which areas to
remove and which areas to keep in this
picture we have a couple problems most
of the roses and also the stems are
being marked as part of the background
so we need to tell word to keep those
areas in the picture
click mark areas to keep then click and
drag to create a line over the area's
you want as you can see
word will readjust the image while you
work now it's including part of the
background by accident so we need to
mark this area to remove that looks
better go through the image and keep
marking areas as needed if you make a
mistake all you have to do is click
delete mark then click the mark you want
to remove at this point our foreground
subjects look good and the entire
background is highlighted magenta notice
that I've left these two roses in the
background which is going to remove them
from the image too this is just another
way of using the feature to customize
your image you decide what's part of the
background and what's not so it's
completely up to you when you're ready
you just need to exit the tool click the
keep changes button here and that's it
now that the picture has a transparent
background there are lots of interesting
things we can do with it for example we
could place it on top of a shape or even
another picture the image also works
well placed next to other objects here
it really contributes to the
professional look of the design
if you notice that you've missed
something you can always edit the
picture again by returning to the remove
background command with this very
special feature you can do things in
word that you would normally do in a
photo editing program now that you know
how it works make sure you give it a try
you