Have a great photo but don’t like the background? Change it! With a little patience and practice, a pair of images and an image editing program that offers layering, you can.

This is a very basic tutorial, which works best when backgrounds are fairly simple and the edges of a subject are well-defined.

Before

After

Changing the background of a digital image

1. Open your image and then click on an edge selection tool such as the Magnetic Lasso found in Adobe Photoshop or Elements.
   
2. Carefully outline the edges of the subject. You may have to use the add and subtract icon to get a more precise outline.
3. After the image is selected, inverse the selection. Select > Inverse.
4. Next, open the image you plan to use for the background — in this illustration, a plain beach scene. The image will open in a new window.
5. Select all, then Copy. Select menu > All
6. Edit menu > Copy. The sunset image will be placed on the clipboard.
7. Make the first window active by clicking on it; then use the paste into menu to place the clipboard image into the selected area. Edit > Paste into.
8. If desired, move the image around with the Move tool selected until the background image is place as you like it.
9. Save image layers as a JPEG file.

Refer to your program manual or help files for specific information.