If I want to remove the background from an image, I will just upload it to an AI, and within seconds the background will be removed. But before AI was invented, people would have had to edit and design the background themselves.
It took much time and effort to edit and remove the background by hand. Moreover, the removal and editing process had to be done in a darkroom or with special devices. There are various methods for manual background removal. However, when new technologies and special software were invented, background design became easier and faster.
Thus, multiple innovations allowed to improve and change the way of background removal. The entire process took decades to become automatic and accurate. This process influenced the way of business work, photography development, and graphic designing. In this article, you will find out the history of background removal and its development from the manual photographic darkroom to modern AI-based technology.
The Darkroom Era: Manual Background Removal
Now a time has come when we just click a button and crop or cut something out of a photograph on a computer and instantly see the final image; but in the past, a photographer had to think about every aspect of the photo they took as there weren't any easy ways of removing an object or a background. They had to cut it out with a scalpel so it was a matter of skill and art. The results were often different according to the photographer's skill.
I once saw one in an old magazine, the photographer superimposed several photos on top of each other to create one seamless image. Now anyone can do that with ease in Photoshop in a matter of minutes but back then it must have taken hours upon hours of carefully cutting out each section and using multiple negatives to layer them on top of each other. The editor had to decide ahead of time what was going to stay and what was going to go. It reminds me of working a jigsaw puzzle. You have to think about how the pieces go together but if you put a single piece in the wrong spot, you could potentially ruin the whole picture.
The biggest challenge of darkroom editing was not a quickness of processing but rather the ability to maintain the same quality of images. Today, one can rely on AI to obtain similar results, but back then, it was not the case. More than once a photographer faced the task of getting the same print, which took him hours to complete. Moreover, darkroom editing implied not only technical skills but also involved a certain degree of discipline and concentration. Those who were not able to develop such qualities had to struggle with their work in the dark.
The Digital Revolution: How Photoshop Changed Everything
The arrival of digital editing software has revolutionized the way of background removal. One of the most influential programs in this regard is Adobe Photoshop, which was released to the public and offered the chance to edit photos many times faster than was possible before.
Moreover, Photoshop allowed designers to perform their work not in darkrooms, but on computer monitors. Such programs as Photoshop introduced the world to the concept of layers, which allowed people to make changes to the image without altering the source file.
It also brought in selection tools that could help in the background erasing process. However, the tools remained complex, and the removal of the background still required meticulous work.
Thus, even though Photoshop and similar programs provided the opportunity to make the process of background erasing much faster and more convenient, it remained largely dependent on the skills and experience of the designer.
To achieve good results, one would have to work with the photo at a large scale to make sure that all unnecessary elements had been removed. The complexity of each image varied depending on how much detail it had, which took extra time to edit.
From Manual Masking to Automated Selection
As image editing software evolved and improved, techniques for background removal also advanced and became less tedious. This was the era of automated selection features.
Rather than using the conventional tracing method that was very tedious and time-consuming, image editors were introduced to selection tools capable of making assumptions of the main subject in the image. These tools used pattern recognition technology to identify patterns in the image such as color, contrast, and edges to determine relevant sections of the image to make the background removal process much faster compared to the manual tracing method.
Features such as Quick Selection, Magnetic Lasso, and edges detection tools allowed the user to make selections with just a few clicks to complete the background removal task. The tools were not effective for all types of images and required some manual editing to complete the process. However, they greatly reduced the time taken to perform background removal tasks in most cases.
This was the first form of automation process in background removal and it saw the introduction of more advanced and intelligent features that are capable of completing background removal tasks in just a few seconds. Using these features eliminated the need for intensive manual work and allowed designers and photographers to complete multiple background removal tasks faster than before.
Clipping Paths to One-Click Removal: The Bridge to AI
When I first learned about “clipping paths” from professional photo editors in the design field, I knew that they are regarded as a standard for image editing. Using the Pen tool, you could trace the image’s outline in order to extract it from the original background. Such paths’ precision was especially useful when it came to online shops or jewelry photography, where a lot of detail needed to be preserved. This is why clipping paths remained popular in print catalog product photography.
However, a high quality has its price - the time. I remember an interview of a product photographer who had to edit dozens of photos of the products every day, and he said that even for the simpilist products he had to trace each detail, and it takes much time. Imagine you are a clothes store owner and you have 500 products, and each of them has several pictures - and to remove a background you will spend a lot of time. And this is when the industry realized that the more quantity and quality - the more time it takes.
When one-click background removers first came out, they were not particularly well received. These early automatic background removers had a tendency to make mistakes. Often times, the subject of the image would be partially cut out, or sometimes, there would still be bits of the original background left. They weren't popularized overnight, but people began using these convenient tools because they made one previously time-consuming task much faster. One that used to take ten minutes per photo could now be done in seconds, albeit with some errors.
I think, the era has begun, when background removal became a real novelty. For the first time, image editing became available to everyone: common entrepreneurs, Etsy sellers, social media managers - in other words, people who are not professionals in the field. I saw many start-ups that did not want to waste the money on hiring a designer at their early stages - so they edited the images of their products themselves. And it was this step, which made the way to AI ready for use - since the need arose, and the market responded by offering solutions.
Neural Networks and the Modern AI Era
The biggest progress in background erasing was enabled by the introduction of neural networks and deep learning algorithms. Unlike the previous approaches, which were based on relatively simple contrast or edge detection principles, modern AI can be trained on thousands of images, enabling it to learn what details constitute the image subject and what can be safely removed.
As a result, modern algorithms can perform background erasing much faster and with a higher accuracy than humans could. Additionally, such algorithms are much better at isolating the subject in complex situations, when, for example, there are fine hairs or animal fur, shadows, translucent objects, and other challenging details. Combined together, these advantages enable modern AI to perform removals that previously required extensive manual editing in just a few seconds.
Not only that, but such programs can often operate in real-time, making them extremely convenient for implementation as part of web applications or other software, including online stores or content management systems. In short, background erasing algorithms enable virtually anyone who has access to a camera and the Internet to remove backgrounds from their photos with relative ease and expediency. Operations that used to require extensive and costly training to perform are now accessible to anyone with an iPhone camera.
Conclusion
When examining the history of the background removal process, one cannot help but notice that it is quite an impressive achievement. Every next generation managed to address the issue, which the previous one was unable to solve. First, image manipulation became possible in a darkroom, then it became available to anyone with computer software, and now artificial intelligence took the background removal to a new level. However, the most interesting part is that every advancement in the technology not only made the background removal process easier but also contributed to the overall increase in creative expression.
If you are comparing the old ways of working and the current ones, the most evident difference is accessibility. In the past, only an expert could create an image with a professional appearance. However, today a student, a freelancer, an online seller, or a content creator can eliminate the background themselves. So, the most apparent distinction is that the skills required are no longer as high as before.
If you have not yet used a modern tool for removing backgrounds with artificial intelligence, try it right now: upload a picture of your product or a portrait, see the result, and feel the difference compared to doing the same by hand. In my opinion, you should try the tool because you can understand its usefulness only when working with it. If you want to try such a service and see how easy it is to remove the background in a picture these days, feel free to take a trial offer from a service named BG Eraser.