Related Articles

Anyone who has medium familiarity with Adobe Photoshop has probably discovered the usefulness of the Magic Wand tool that has resided in the standard toolbar since version 0.87. The tool is used to select pixels based on their color within a range (Tolerance) that can be set by the user. If you're accustomed to using the 'magic wand' tool to make parts of pictures transparent in Microsoft Office applications, you'll need to rearrange your workflow in Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac 2011. Adobe illustrator cs6 logo design tutorial for beginners - How to Create Royal Crown Logo - Duration: 15:21. Free School Graphic Design Tutorial - Professional Logo Design 53,339 views.

• 1 Print a PDF With a Change of Font Color
• 2 Rotate a MacBook Pro Display
• 3 Adjust Brightness on an iMac
• 4 Make Powerpoint Pictures Transparent

If you're accustomed to using the 'magic wand' tool to make parts of pictures transparent in Microsoft Office applications, you'll need to rearrange your workflow in Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac 2011. The presentation program features a new interface that relocates the commands for changing the appearance of graphics you add to your slides. The Formatting Palette you used in previous versions gives way to context-sensitive commands you issue by clicking on the ribbon at the top of the application window.

Insert your picture, either from a file you created in an image-editing application or from the clip art collection that ships with Microsoft Office. The Home tab of the PowerPoint ribbon includes an Insert tab with a 'Picture' icon that opens a drop-down menu when you click on it, revealing the options for picture insertion.

Leave the picture selected so the PowerPoint ribbon displays the Format Picture tab. Within the Adjust section of the tab, click on the 'Recolor' button and select 'Set Transparent Color.'

Click within your picture on the color area you want to make transparent. Areas of solid color respond better to this feature than do colors that appear within the continuous-tone details of a photograph.

Tips

• To extract an object from its background, use PowerPoint's Remove Background feature, accessible from the Format Picture tab.
• To remove transparency where you've applied it to an image, select the picture and click on the 'Reset' button at the right of the Format Picture tab's Adjust section.
• If you can't remove the background from an image, it may be an Encapsulated PostScript graphic or part of a group.

Warning

• PowerPoint's 'Set Transparent Color' feature only works on the one specific shade that's under your cursor when you click on your image to process it. If you apply it to what looks like a large solid-color area in a photograph -- a green lawn, blue ocean or off-white wall -- you'll either see a splotched appearance or think the procedure didn't work. That's because the image actually contains a wide range of shades that appear solid, and only one shade became transparent.

About the Author

Elizabeth Mott has been a writer since 1983. Mott has extensive experience writing advertising copy for everything from kitchen appliances and financial services to education and tourism. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in English from Indiana State University.

Photo Credits

• Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images

Choose Citation Style

Magic Wand Tool Photoshop

Before we get started

After spending over 20 years working with Macs, both old and new, theres a tool I think would be useful to every Mac owner who is experiencing performance issues.

Magic Wand Tool For Paint

CleanMyMac is highest rated all-round cleaning app for the Mac, it can quickly diagnose and solve a whole plethora of common (but sometimes tedious to fix) issues at the click of a button. It also just happens to resolve many of the issues covered in the speed up section of this site, so Download CleanMyMac to get your Mac back up to speed today.

Anyone who has medium familiarity with Adobe Photoshop has probably discovered the usefulness of the Magic Wand tool that has resided in the standard toolbar since version 0.87. The tool is used to select pixels based on their color within a range (Tolerance) that can be set by the user.

Beginning with OS X Leopard, Apple has incorporated a variant of the Magic Wand into the Mac OS Component app known as Preview. Dubbed Instant Alpha, it is similar in function and is used for removing specific components of a photograph as when removing a background to isolate a subject.

The Hidden Tool

With OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), Instant Alpha now is hidden away in its own toolbar and nested within with a group of selection tools. Access is to the tool is gained by first clicking on the Show Edit Toolbar button shown above. The Edit Toolbar will display beneath the default toolbar revealing several useful tools, the Selection Tools button among them (see above). You can either: a) click and hold that button for a pop-up menu of all the selection tools, or, b) stretch the width of the Preview window causing the selection tools to line up side-by-side in the lower toolbar. Providing you are viewing an image and not a pdf, you will be able to use any of the tools in this menu (otherwise they will be grayed out, indicating that they are not available for use with pdf files).

NOTE: All of the tools in Preview use the same cross-shaped cursor (+). There is no indication of which tool you are using once you’ve made your selection in the toolbar.

Background Removal

Start by clicking and holding inside of any group of pixels you wish to remove. Dragging away from the click point in any direction increases the size of the selection based on the similarity of adjacent pixels. The selection will display in real-time as a transparent, red mask. When you release the mouse, the mask changes to show the “marching ants” around the area that will be removed. Clicking the Delete key will remove the selected pixels and leave an area of transparency.

Adobe Photoshop Magic Wand Tool

Tips & Caveats

• In most cases you will be making multiple selections and deletions in order to remove the entire background – surroundings are rarely that simple.
• The more complex the background is, the more difficult it will be to remove. In extreme cases it you may save time with the Lasso Selection Tool or the Smart Lasso Tool making a selection around the component you are isolating. Then, rather than deleting from the photo, you would use copy and paste, placing your subject into a new file. Here’s an example:

As you can see, expanding the selection of the lavender plant in the background includes some of the subject because of the low contrast.

• The best images for isolating subjects are those with the greatest contrast between the background and the subject. Otherwise, Instant Alpha will not be able to differentiate between the subject’s pixels and those belonging to the background. Another example:

Here the subject and the surrounding sand are completely different in color and contrast so the Instant Alpha tool makes quick work of selecting the background for deletion.

Magic Wand Tool Photoshop Mac

• Preview is not Photoshop. Although extremely capable, don’t expect this free, lightweight app to perform like a $700 powerhouse. Preview will get you only so far (further with extreme patience), but you may find yourself quickly defeated if your expectations are too high. For example, Preview does not allow for adding non-contiguous selections to an existing one.
• There are only two things you can do with a selection in Preview: delete or copy (for pasting into another document or application). Using the Adjust Color palette only affects the entire image – there is no way to isolate the adjustments to a selection (as is possible in Photoshop).

Magic Wand Tool For After Effects

Keeping these caveats in mind, Preview is a very handy tool for kicking out a quick edit for web or email display, or to save time (and money) over using software like Photoshop, especially if your normal workflow doesn’t require professional image editing capabilities.