### Erasing image backgrounds

Comic Life lets you take a photo and erase parts of the image by selecting a particular color. All similar colors (within an adjustable tolerance) are removed from the image allowing you to composite a photo of a person against a new background - allowing more creative comic possibilities.

The effectiveness of this feature is highly dependent on the image preparation. A strong contrasting color without a shadow as a background will produce the cleanest results. The background color should not be represented in any of the image you wish to keep - if it is then those parts of the image will also be erased. The purer the background the less chance there is for the wrong pixels to be erased.

Once you have an image which you would like the erase, select it and choose the "Edit->Erase Image Background..." menu item. A sheet appears with an image preview.

Note: The preview allows quick feedback as you adjust settings. The actual image will not be operated on until you click "OK".
Click on the color well and choose a color that is close to the background color and click "Preview". The preview image is updated to illustrate which pixels will be erased. If few of the background pixels are erased you should choose a different color. If most of the pixels are erased you should adjust the Tolerance slider to try and get those pixels erased as well. Click on the preview to see the impact of your changes.

Once you're happy with the result click on the OK button to perform the operation on the actual image.
This will not effect the original image that you brought into Comic Life - but a copy.
Once the progress bar completes the image on the page is updated to show the new image.

The settings are saved so if you have a few images with a similar background you can quickly process them by selecting each one and processing them one at a time throught the Background Eraser.

Tip: If the background is not a uniform color you can use more advanced features in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements to get the images you need. Simply process the images in those tools and drag the new files into Comic Life.