How to do anything on your Mac, iPhone & iPad
Indulge in creative compositing using Pixelmator Pro 3.3’s handy tool
QUICK LOOK Work with the Remove Color feature
The new Remove Color tool lives in the Color Adjustments panel. Toggle it on to get started.
After picking the eyedropper use the Loupe tool to magnify and sample the color that you want to remove.
These sliders fine–tune the range of colors that are removed, which is effective for removing unevenly lit backgrounds.
Once you’ve created a transparent background on the top layer you can add a new background on the layer below.
THE MACOS VERSION of Apple’s Photos app has a Selective Color panel that enables you to target a specific color in a picture and change its hue, saturation and brightness. This powerful tool is a springboard to a range of creative looks such as turning a blue sky into a cinematic cyan. You can also selectively darken the blue sky to make the clouds pop out in contrast. Pixelmator Pro has a very similar selective color panel, but thanks to the latest upgrade that app now boasts an additional tool that Photos doesn’t have: Remove Color.
This useful tool enables you to target a specific color (such as a green background) and turn it completely transparent. You can then place another image on a layer below to give your isolated subject a new background. Remove Color works with stills and videos, so we’ll put it through its paces with a green screen video clip (though the techniques are identical for removing color in still images).
BLUE SCREEN ON A BUDGET
+We shot our subject against a colored backdrop in a dedicated green screen studio, but you could purchase a large green (or blue) card and use it as colored background for your subject. This green/blue screen compositing technique could be handy for YouTubers who want to add a more exciting backdrop to their “talking heads” footage.
HOW TO Remove colors
At Pixelmator Pro’s launch screen, click “Browse files on your Mac” to select a clip or still. Here we can view our video clip by tapping t
