Word has a great feature called background 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 & 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 all together.
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 areas 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!