Ever had a photo of someone or something where you wish you could change the background? Even make it more whimsical or fantastical? You can! With Canva. Here’s how…
If you’ve been around the photography world for long enough, you’ll remember that the idea of extracting an object from a photo was incredibly difficult. Sometimes people resorted to printing and scissors it was so tricky. Then the era of digital photo editing arrived with the iconic Adobe Photoshop and it got somewhat easier, but still, if you wanted to do a good job of “masking” an object, you needed some skill. In fact, companies sold add-ons for Photoshop that were focused on creating sophisticated image masks!
Being able to isolate objects in photos – and differentiate between foreground and background – was one of the first AI-powered image capabilities that companies demonstrated too. There are also lots of applications for this tech ranging from removing unwanted background elements with a logical and contextual fill (b’bye photo bombers and unpleasant exes!) to allowing more sophisticated image montages.
I use it almost daily with my own image manipulation, often as part of compositing images to create thumbnails for videos I’ve uploaded to my AskDaveTaylor YouTube channel. Have a peek, you can see how I’m on the thumbnails, but without a background behind me! But what if I want to layer a more fantastical image, one where a photographic object appears in a non-photo background? Turns out that the online image editing utility Canva does a great job. Let me show you how it works…
REMOVING A PHOTO BACKGROUND IN CANVA
Let’s start with a reference photograph, of a 2024 Toyota Tacoma TRD pickup truck:
Getting rid of the background, foreground, even the vehicle shadow is a non-trivial task and would definitely take a while in a sophisticated tool like Photoshop.
To proceed, I’m going to open up Canva, create a new Project, and Upload the image:
You can see on the right side I’ve chosen “+ Add new” then “Upload”. The image uploads and we’re ready to get started:
Canva’s justifiably proud of its many AI-powered tools, known in the program as “Magic Studio”. The first one on the list is what I seek: “BG Remover“. A single click and…
If you compare that to the original photo, it’s really done a great job here with its background removal, getting it right, down to the individual pixel. The green of the lawn through the windows is unfortunate, but we’ll live with that so we can proceed. To do so, I’m going to click on the “Use in a design” button which will add the newly background-free image as a layer to a new canvas.
USING AI TO GENERATE A NEW BACKGROUND
The Design area of Canva is where it’s all happening, so there are quite a few options, mostly located on the left side of the image canvas area:
It might be hard to read them, but they are, top to bottom, Design, Elements, Text, Brand, Uploads, Draw and Projects. Since the background’s already removed on this image, it’s time to build the background. To do that, I’m going to go to Elements and choose the AI Image Generator:
Though both example prompts are tempting, I’m going for something a bit more simple:
It specifies “lush green forest with a rough dirt road in the foreground, watercolor”. Return to submit it and after a few moments Canva’s created four possible images:
Here’s where it gets fun because you can tweak your prompt, use the “Generate again” button as many times as you’d like! Turns out I like the top right image, so I’m just going to click on it to have it appear on the canvas:
Looks a bit uninspiring but we’re very close!
MANIPULATING LAYERS IN CANVA
Notice on the right side of the image above I’ve moved to the “Arrange” section. This manages the layers of an image and with a single click on “To back” the truck jumps in front of the watercolor image. A few judicious click-and-drag actions and the truck has a new background:
Since the truck object is just another image, it’s easy to click on it then use the move/size/resize handles to shrink the truck down a bit to make more sense in the image.
Looks good! To download it I click on “Share” on the top right. Here’s the result:
Pretty slick, isn’t it? With a bit more work I could have a few of the foreground elements in front of the truck, which would make it that much believable. Now, I encourage you to go try Canva for yourself!
Pro tip: I’ve been writing about online image editing tools including Canva for quite a while. While you’re here do check out my extensive Windows help area and AI help library for more useful tutorials while you’re visiting!