issue cropping photo

hello and hope everyone is well.
i am having trouble cropping a photo to the way i want it. first let me say im using print shop 2 for my project i also have iWork, not sure if one of these programs would suit me better for what im trying to do. this is not a joke this is just the best way i can explain, say i have a picture of a donut drag it into print shop and i crop it around the donut so i just have the picture of the round donut. how do i crop it again so that i remove the hole in the middle of the donut?

i hope this makes sense


thanks
brian

I'm not familiar with Print Shop 2 so I can't help you with that, I suspect that's very very outdated.

Pages has an option to remove a color (in this case, probably white) from a picture quite easily under the command "Instant Alpha." You can then copy and paste the corrected image elsewhere but can't re-save it as an image.

You can also use other graphics tools for this, I like the $40 Pixelmator (which also has what amounts to "Instant Alpha"), I'm not aware of any other tools that offer that for free, but maybe someone else knows.

Even Poor old neglected Preview that came on your Mac has the Instant Alpha feature to quickly and easily complete the removal of backgrounds and donut holes. Open the image in Preview and you will find the "Instant Alpha" tool located in Preview's tool bar (not the Menu bar), under the Select menu.
Once you have the tool selected, click on part of the background you wish to delete and begin dragging. The red overlay that appears represents the area that can be deleted. Drag until the space is covered and let go. Press delete on your keyboard and the area will be removed. You can do this over and over till you get all the background deleted. You can even remove doughnut holes this way.
In order to keep the image with the background deleted, you must save it as a PNG or GIF file with the alpha check box selected. Only PNG and GIF will let you save with Transparency.

DOH! How could I have forgotten about Preview! I use it all the time (just not for that!)! Thanks Pomeroy!

chas_m said:

DOH! How could I have forgotten about Preview! I use it all the time (just not for that!)! Thanks Pomeroy!

Click to expand...

Preview is often overlooked and it is a powerful app when you learn to use it for more than just to open an image or look at a PDF file. Preview is also great for Cropping images, doing Screen Shots that you can save as different types of image files and annotate with text, boxes, circles and arrows, then save to places other than the desktop. By dropping Multiple files on Preview you can do Batch operations too, like Adjust the size, Color Adjustments, flip and rotate images. I use it a lot and still find new uses for it.