Every so often, you may want to remove the background from an image in your Word document, leaving a transparent location rather. You might turn to a full-featured image editor, but you can likewise do this right within Microsoft Word. Here’s how.

There are lots of reasons why you might want to get rid of the background from an image. Perhaps you wish to concentrate on one specific person or object without the background getting in the way. Maybe the background color doesn’t fit well with other colors in your document. Or maybe you simply wish to use Word’s text wrapping tools to get the text wrapped tighter around the image. Whatever your factor, removing the background from an image in Word is quite easy.

The caveat here is that Word’s image editing tools are not as sophisticated as those you’ll find in something like Photoshop, or perhaps other image modifying apps. They work best if you have a relatively basic image with a clearly-defined subject.

How to Remove the Background from an Image in Word

We’re going to assume you’ve already placed the image into your Word file. If not, go on and do that now.

Click the image to select it. When you do that, you’ll see an additional “Format” tab appear on the Ribbon. Change to that tab and then click the “Remove Background” button on the far-left side.

Word colors the background the image in magenta; whatever in magenta will get eliminated from the image. This Is Microsoft’s attempt at auto-detecting the background of an image.

As you can see, Word isn’t quite sophisticated sufficient to properly pick out the background on most images. That’s ok. Word supplies two tools for helping you clean things up.

You ought to now see a new “Background Removal” tab on the Ribbon with a couple of choices: Mark Areas to Keep, Mark Areas to Remove, Discard All Changes, and Keep Changes.

Returning to our example, you can see that Word didn’t properly mark part of the background– there’s some lawn still visible right in front of our tiger’s face. Word also marked part of the tiger (the location behind his head) improperly as part of the background. We’re going to utilize both the “Mark Areas to Keep” and “Mark Areas to Remove” tools to fix that.

Let’s begin with the locations we want to keep. Click the “Mark Areas to Keep” button.

Your guideline modifications to a pen that lets you highlight the areas of the image you wish to keep. You can click a spot or draw a bit. You’ll need to experiment with your image to discover what works best. You can undo an action if you go too far, or you can click the “Discard All Changes” button to wipe out all your changes and begin over.

When you’re done marking things, you can click anywhere outside the image to see the result. After marking some locations on our tiger to keep, we now have an image that looks a bit like this.

Next, we’re going to mark the areas we want to remove from the image. In our case, it’s that bit of background that still stays. This time click the “Mark Areas to Remove” button.

Once again, your pointer becomes a pen. This time, click or paint the locations you wish to eliminate from the image. They ought to turn magenta as you do so.

Click outside the image at any time to check your work. When you’re pleased, click the “Keep Changes” button on the “Background Removal” tab.

You need to now have a tidy, back-ground complimentary image!

That’s all there is to it!

There are lots of factors why you may desire to remove the background from an image. Or maybe you just desire to use Word’s text wrapping tools to get the text covered tighter around the image. The caveat here is that Word’s image modifying tools are not as advanced as those you’ll discover in something like Photoshop, or even other image modifying apps. Word colors the background the image in magenta; whatever in magenta will get eliminated from the image. As you can see, Word isn’t quite advanced sufficient to precisely choose out the background on most images.