Hi, good as 'Preparation Tool', as it's not that magic. For better and satisfactory results you have to take your 'cutout' elsewhere to refine edges. Corel PSP does the job with it's own rubber tools, magic wand a.s.o (I've been making own 'tubes' there for years, so that experience helps), BUT - on simple objects and 'striking' backgrounds this simple Tool might be enough to use on it's own. Every little helps?:)

Running XP-PRO w/SP3. (AMD Processor) This program will not load. I get an application error:

"The exception illegal instruction. An attempt was made to execute an illegal instruction. (0x000001d) occurred in the application at the location 0x0040339a. Click OK to terminate the program or cancel to debug the program.

Failure. Too bad, it sounded like a really useful program!

Excellent; I installed the software on two different machines:

(1) Win 7, 32 bit, in a Standard User Account (had to give the Administrator password, of course), then the Activation program;

(2) Win 7, 64 bit, in a Administrator User Account (no password required), then the Activation program.

In both cases, the program seemed to install and run correctly. I tried it with some photos, and the results were excellent - as quick and easy as pie. I am most delighted with it. The only weakness that I can see is that it does not seem to have a facility for adjusting the picture at the pixel level. For top level work, such as for advertising agency work, this is a serious gap - but then again, for such work, most people would, I think, use a professional-level program. For lower level work, however, this is more than adequate. My only grizzle would be the $19.99 price; for a one-trick program such as this, and thinking of other programs that I pay for, $5 would be a perfect price, and $10 my upper limit.

One other issue: when I installed in Standard User Account, and ran the Activation program, it installed correctly, but did not register. This meant that it would do everything except save the resulting work. As it happened, I noticed that the Help file had options for 'Order PhotoScissor' and 'Enter Serial Number', just as if it has not been registered. To fix this problem, I had to change my User Account to Administrator, and then run the Activation program. That seemed the only way that I could get PhotoScissor to register. This is, of course, a GiveAwayOfTheDay problem; it would not affect anyone who bought the program in the normal way.

Having said all of which: this is definitely a keeper. And perhaps I might even come to love it so much that one day I'll shell out its high price. Maybe.

Downloaded and installed just fine on Windows 7 64 bit. Nice program. Tried out something simple and it worked. As I do not have anything like this I will keep it.

I don't get it. I downloaded this program and installed it just fine on a win. 7 64 bit pc. However, no matter how many times I throw a picture of my ex wife at my computer, this program won't cut it up! It just lands on my desk. I need real scissors I suppose.

This is a great tool. Did anyone notice that the size of the keep / remove cursor stays a constant size when you zoom? that is a neat little trick that the big programs don't do.

Thumbs up from me

I downloaded it and experimented a bit. Besides very fine things like hair or similar fine structures, it works pretty well. The trick is not just to set 2 red and 2 green strokes, but to mark a bit more of the area. Then press the process (like play) button and look at the result. If it has "eaten up" too much of your foreground, just press undo, reprocess and have a look at the result. Everything of your foreground should be there. If there ist still too much background, add some more red strokes (not too many at once) and reprocess. Be sure not to go over "colour borders". It is pretty amazing! Do not give up too early. Having said this, it might really not work if your picture has too many similar colours. Thank you!

When I try to activate I keep getting this error message- The instruction at"0x004061e1"referenced memory at "0x00000004". The memory could not be read. I'm running XP.

(I know I'm supposed to upgrade, but can't afford to.)

So, any Ideas that don't include upgrade of OS?

I just bought this program. Bummer.... It does exactly what it is supposed to do, but you do have to use a little due diligence. I tried it on a product picture and then used another photo program to create another layer and then put that NOW invisible background picture on a layer with plain white and it worked perfectly. Saves me some time from using some others, I also have InPaint and I use that a lot also.

Installed on and activated Win 7/64 with no problems. Works great and very intuitive interface. This is a keeper! Thanks Giovanni and Karl along with everyone else and GAOTD for all of your informative comments.

Inpaint is a great program, so I had high expectations for this one too (same company, I think). So I tried this program and am not at all impressed. I admit I didn't spend a lot of time with it.

My first few attempts produced very bad results. I might have gotten better results if I zoomed in close and played with brush sizes, but the program is marketed as a simple "swipe the background with red, swipe the foreground with green" and it does it's magic. Far from the truth. Not worth the time or effort to mark every little detail especially when other programs do this much more quickly and easily.

I think this program has great potential, but as it is it seems very primitive. I hope to see a vastly updated version one day, but for now this program is much too rough to be of much value to me.

Nice little program. Yes, it has some disadvantages compare to professional software like photoshop but anyway it is good. Especially for beginners. Anyway, the key can be found in the registry and you basically get the program for free without install time limit. This way of activating is not as secure. You can even download the trial from the official website and activate it with the key you've just found. To prove this, here are the last letters of the key: -EWST-GAPF

This could save your marriage and solve world hunger, too! Get it now!

Oh Boy! I cannot wate to try this out! Thanks again!

Great! Fast and easy, I used it for quite a difficult image of architecture - it works great! Thanks a lot!

This product is very quick at setting a transparent area for an image that would take longer in products like Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro etc.


You do NOT have to carefully select the areas to make transparent but just make sure that the red (remove) marker touches any colors that you want to become transparent and the green (keep) marker touches any colors that you want to keep.
A feathering from 0 to 10 can smooth out the edge between transparent and kept colors by adding a gradient of transparency into the kept areas.


NOTE: after running the 'Cut Out' process I found it easier to select further 'remove' or 'keep' areas on the resulting image (right) instead of the original image (left) before running the 'Cut Out' command again.

example ...
One of my images had a white to dark red background gradient, so i simply ran a thin straight line with the 'remove' marker from the top of the image to bottom making sure all shades of red were involved.
Then I ran a single line with the 'keep' marker across all the shades of green, blue and shadows (grays) that were in the object to keep.
Clicking 'Cut Out' gave an excellent result.


So long as the colors you select for transparency are not the same as the colors selected for keeping, the process is quick and effective.
Alas, if colors you want to remove are also selected by the 'keep' marker there is going to be a conflict, and from doing tests I have found that the 'keep' marker dominates over the 'remove' marker.


I use images with transparency for textures in 3D environments (Blender, Maya etc) and this product will be a good tool for many images needing transparent areas adjusted/added.


I give this product a thumbs up because of its simple and quick approach to setting transparencies - just be careful to use images that do not have color conflicts.

"Picture Cutout Guide Lite" version is FREE (first link above): I'm shocked to see how many people don't read the whole webpage.

As for Clippingmagic...yes you are right....they must have changed pricing policy because it was FREE until last month (I've used it several time in the past without paying a dime).

But 3$ per month doesn't seem to me a price to make people "shocked"!!

I am not able to state with absolute certainty but Liquid resizer (Retarget) Had said that Onone software bought their program out and may be planning to offer a free beta version of it. They have a number of great products that work well with photoshop and I am guessing they will add it to one of their modules or create a module for it that works as a stand alone or with photoshop.
So keep an eye out for the beta.

Sorry about the clipping magic advice I guess I did not check it very well. My bad.

When you have 3 major apps already running & don't want to load another one, this little gem is quick & painless. I'm keeping it.

I did a quick test, to remove the sky from around a pic of a jagged rock butte. It seemed to work great, and was very quick. (Once I circled back and re-saved it as a PNG, after dumbly exporting it as a JPG which didn't support the transparency.)

This going to be a handy one-trick tool. Quicker than opening GIMP and hand-trimming, or even doing alpha-channel transparency stuff.

Thanks GAOTD and Teorex!

To Giovanni your first alternative cost money as well. I'm shocked you usually give out freebies. I like to get my alternatives from you and Ashcroft. Unfortunately your alternatives are not freebies and Ashcroft must have had his baby cause he's missing in action. so congrats to Ashcroft on your new child.

To Giovanni: your second alternative cost money. http://clippingmagic.com
I take your advice most of the time and use your free alternatives more than the GAOTD offers, but this offer cost money and I only look for free apps.

Installed on a Windows 7 platform easily and activated without problems. It is a simple program that does exactly what it says it is going to do, and if you have good eye-hand coordination, you can get a pretty precise cut out, even with complicated areas. It will take a little bit of skill on intricate areas, but overall, this is a welcome addition to my array of digital imaging software. It is easier and cleaner to use than other programs I've tested. This is a keeper. Thanks, GOTD.

As others have posted, the company, TeoreX, has been a favorite with apps like Inpaint. photoscissors.com [linked at the top of the page] tells you what you need to know -- it's designed so people can avoid image editing software, & requires as little user input [& skills] as possible.

The developer(s) at TeoreX do use their seam carving expertise [e.g. Inpaint], so PhotoScissors is more than a very simple version of a magic wand selection tool, but it is what it is, so it won't work when/if you want to make more complicated selections. Pros & semi-pros however *might* find PhotoScissors useful sometimes to rough out a selection they can improve upon, e.g. importing the results into an image editor as a selection, or object or layer you can turn into a selection.

Note: I think that mileage will vary using PhotoScissors not just based on the image content, but also on the amount of noise in the image. If you have a noisy image from your camera, cell etc., which is very common BTW, when you zoom in using an image editor you'll see that no edges are well defined, and few if any colors are really solid. That makes any sort of selections difficult.

PhotoScissors is a clean G.I., distractionless and dedicated rendering software: in other words, with a tiny bit of work on your part, it takes the unwanted part of the background out of an image.

Installed on a windows 8.1 laptop (external drive) with no complications, works as expected and just as advertised. The help section is well written, comprehensive and useful. The company appears to be safe and trustworthy.

This is nice for people who can't afford the expensive stuff. Tried it out liked what it did, made it so easy on a complex color photo. What took hours I did in a minute. I will keep this one. Thanks guys.

I never comment, but this program deserves a comment. EXCELLENT, simple straightforward. Does exactly what it says. I couldn't believe how fine this program cut the image out that i selected. Thank You!!

It is a bit basic, but that is OK with me. DL and installed on Win 7 Ultimate 64b, quick easy clean. Some basic drop outs working ok.

Inpaint (also by Teorex) is one of my favorite programs (was given away here several times). Love this company and will try this prog further.

I am a cheapie and I bought the latest Inpaint, even though it has been given away here, I want the latest version and I want to support a company (Teorex) because I love this prog.

Installed fine on Win 7 Pro SP1 64 bit.
Nice software, can see lots of uses.
Thanks

#7 Inpaint is something along the same lines as liquid resizer and is a pretty useful program for those who were not able to get liquid resizer before it was bought out by Onone software.

#8. If you are using Photoscissors for anything but fun and have even a limited amount of graphic skills there are all kinds of cons to Photoscissors 1.1 to be honest.

Anyone who has tried real quality software like photoshop and then used this one trick pony will testify to that.
Be honest Giovanni would this be your choice of program when doing any graphic that your name would be associated with?

Clipping magic: I tried this online background removal tool and it is probably every bit as good as todays give away but it is an online tool.

Giovanni nailed that one and always brings something good to GAOTD

As for Tint Guide: after looking into the free version AKA trial version of it I discovered that it has limitations and it saves all images to a format called TPI format and if you want to then convert the TPI formated files into GIF, JPG etc... you must then purchase the product, at a cost of $45 U.S. DOLLARS. And here they suggest that you may get a free licence but it sounds rather shady. http://tintguide.com/getfree.html

Zemana AntiLogger has reported that it is trying to take snapshots of the clipboard while installing. Its give a danger rating of 4 out of 5.
It states that it cant verify the company.(Unknown)
Have installed to the point where i received this message then uninstalled and tried to install again but still receiving the same message.

Can anyone tell me if its Ok or is there a problem.

Not bad. No Help seems to be available. Like Inpaint a green and red marker to show foreground and background, but the red one seems most important.
Not a particularly intelligent, with no "magnetic" function that I can see, so it doesn't seem to be able to identify and select the boundary between foreground and background itself or cling into it when the area has been marked.

I am directing this question to GAOD in the hopes they can tell me what is happening on my Win7Pro computer. For about 3 months now, I am not able to activate any downloaded programs from this site. I can do it on my laptop but not with my Win7Pro. I keep getting a window popup saying "Give Away of the Day" has stopped working. I then can either check on line or close the program. This is becoming very frustrating. I have clicked on details and I am then taken to a site regarding privacy.
Help and thanks

Tried this out of curiosity and it's very basic. It "works", sort of, on some images and is hopeless with others. As "nogood" (#4 above) says, Paint.net is far superior and is totally free.

Clippingmagic (online) is quite good but is NOT free. Sorry, Giovanni.

Very good app today which does what it claims pretty well!

Of course, compared to more expensive tools like Photoshop, which use the "chroma key" technology, this app cannot be used to remove backgrounds on moving pictures, but, on the other hand, it's able to process images with any type of background and not just those with an unicolor design.

The only CONS I can see is that this GAOTD doesn't allow you to add a new background in the area where the old one was removed.

Anyway THUMBS UP!!

BEST FREE ALTERNATIVES

http://tintguide.com/picturecutout.html

And if you don't want to install anything in your machine, just use this FREE online app:

http://clippingmagic.com

Enjoy!!

This is from the publisher of Inpaint which has always been a favorite here. This one is a little different and will take some getting used to. However it does suffer some of the same problems that Inpaint does.

1)It will not remember the folder you last used and instead always opens in it's default folder. Why does it make us accept it's default rather than setting our own?

2) The same with marker size. It always opens with a large area rather than the area the user last used.

It would seem to be a very easy solution to fix these problems. I hope the publisher will do that. Thank you GOTD team and TeoreX.

Haha, Jesus Christ! I have many icons that i want to have their backgrounds removed. I was going to visit freelancer websites to hire for someone to do it....and then it comes now! Sometimes being lazy is good, delayed it many days. I will download and use it and report you back about my experience.

I have tried PhotoScissors using Madrona.jpg from an old giveaway - Picture Cutout - and have had no success :-(.

Absolutely not working as advertised.

I took the parrot example picture from their website. First task: cut out the "before" frame.

First attempt: marked the upper left frame as foreground with a diagonal line, marked the other two frames as background accordingly.
Result: I got the upper left frame and parts of the bottom left frame, the parrot from the upper left frame contained large "background" areas

Second attempt: redrew the upper left frame with the foregroundmarker, marked the rest of the picture as background with criss cross strokes.
Result: I just got the upper left frame, parrot still contained "background"

No further attempts.
Even starting with the best possible conditions - a clearly defined and closed actual frame surrounding the desired object - this software fails to deliver a result even half as good as I could get using Paint.

It does exactly what it says it does. Of course, unless you have a picture that consists of only areas of solid colour, you'll need to fine tune the clipping path, but it's the same for every tool of this kind. It might not be essential if you have another graphics program, but sometimes a one-trick pony is all you need.

I noticed that it installed as a 64 bit program on my computer, so I assume that the installer contains both the 32 or 64 bit versions.

Ran setup but did not allow it to launch then ran activate now allowed it to launch, doing it this way means it opens is registered.

It is used by marking the areas you want in green and the areas to be removed in red, these can be undone and redone making it easy to use.

A test on a complex image caused it to crash with a C runtime error, this happens on two more occasions.
On a relatively simple image, a white statue against a dark background, it performed quite well.

This marking with different colours is not in my opinion the best way of removing objects.
Many years ago a program called Livepix allowed you to mark the edge of the object to be removed by surrounding it with twin lines making it much easier for the program to understand what had to be removed.

It's a small program that on occasions may prove useful so I'll keep it a bit longer see how it goes.

Installed and registered without problems on a Win 8.1 Pro 64 bit system.

A company without name and address.

A dark interface opens. You select your picture, define foreground (to be cut out) and background (to be removed or colred to a defined color).

With a marker you define, what to cut out. This works for simple tasks and clear defined edges without problems. For complex parts, especially hair or trees with a detailed leave structure, this software has the same problems as many of the cheaper "cut out" tools.

A simple tool, the result depends on your skills.

I have no use for this basic tool.