{"id":64,"date":"2011-04-08T16:42:09","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T07:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/?p=64"},"modified":"2011-05-14T16:24:33","modified_gmt":"2011-05-14T07:24:33","slug":"os-x-instant-alpha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/08\/os-x-instant-alpha\/","title":{"rendered":"OS X Instant Alpha"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Screen-shot-2011-04-08-at-10.52.50-AM.png\"><img data-attachment-id=\"67\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/08\/os-x-instant-alpha\/screen-shot-2011-04-08-at-10-52-50-am\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Screen-shot-2011-04-08-at-10.52.50-AM.png\" data-orig-size=\"572,337\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"seesight\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Screen-shot-2011-04-08-at-10.52.50-AM-300x176.png\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Screen-shot-2011-04-08-at-10.52.50-AM.png\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-67\" style=\"margin: 2px;\" title=\"seesight\" src=\"http:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Screen-shot-2011-04-08-at-10.52.50-AM-300x176.png\" alt=\"seesight\" width=\"300\" height=\"176\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Screen-shot-2011-04-08-at-10.52.50-AM-300x176.png 300w, https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Screen-shot-2011-04-08-at-10.52.50-AM.png 572w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Don&#8217;t you just hate it when you add an image to your blog, presentation, or Moodle course and the image background does not match the site? \u00c2\u00a0I have come across this problem in the past few weeks\u00c2\u00a0with some colleagues who were working on Keynote presentations and Moodle courses for the new semester. \u00c2\u00a0When I heard that one of my colleagues had bought Photoshop in order to edit out image backgrounds I decided to step in and show him how to save some money.<\/p>\n<p>OS X has a powerful image editing tool, called &#8220;Instant Alpha&#8221;, which you can access in some of the basic programs. \u00c2\u00a0For my colleague, I pointed this out in Keynote, but it is also available in\u00c2\u00a0the standard image viewing application, Preview.app.<\/p>\n<p>The image in the upper right of this post is from a <a href=\"http:\/\/souchan-seesight.blogspot.com\/2011\/04\/new-semester-is-coming.html\" target=\"_blank\">blog post<\/a> by one of my students. \u00c2\u00a0He included an image of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.u-shimane.ac.jp\/\" target=\"_blank\">university<\/a> mascot, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.u-shimane.ac.jp\/02university\/2010-1213-0912-15.html\" target=\"_blank\">Ororin<\/a>, but the white\u00c2\u00a0background\u00c2\u00a0really stood out. \u00c2\u00a0It was this image which motivated me to create a quick tutorial video on how to use the Instant Alpha tool in OS X to remove such backgrounds from images. \u00c2\u00a0Here is the video below:<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XbsknyHYqEo?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img data-attachment-id=\"65\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/08\/os-x-instant-alpha\/ororin\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Ororin.png\" data-orig-size=\"182,200\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Ororin After\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Ororin.png\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Ororin.png\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-65 alignright\" title=\"Ororin After\" src=\"http:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Ororin.png\" alt=\"After\" width=\"182\" height=\"200\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Now, I can&#8217;t really show you the before an after images here, as the current background on this site actually matches the background of the original image quite nicely, but I will add the final PNG file anyway. \u00c2\u00a0Download it and pop it into a Keynote file with a dark background and see the difference that a little Instant Alpha can make.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Don&#8217;t you just hate it when you add an image to your blog, presentation, or Moodle course and the image background does not match the site? \u00c2\u00a0I have come across this problem in the past few weeks\u00c2\u00a0with some colleagues who were working on Keynote presentations and Moodle courses for the new semester. \u00c2\u00a0When I heard [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,20,19],"tags":[38],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Ororin.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1u7IY-12","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69,"href":"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/69"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edtechtesol.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}