chocolate-chip chooky Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 (edited) I'm hoping someone tech-savvy here can help me out. I'm trying to work out how to superimpose an image over an existing image in a Word document. The one that is being superimposed needs to be trimmed down as close to its shape as possible, so that it looks like it's part of the original image. Any help will be appreciated. ETA: My daughter is making a piano recital program. We're trying to use a painting of hers, but with a grand piano now in it. We don't want to actually paint the piano onto her original painting. So I took a photo of her painting and put that in a word doc and now I'm trying to get a grand piano onto it. Edited November 12, 2019 by chocolate-chip chooky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chocolate-chip chooky Posted November 12, 2019 Author Share Posted November 12, 2019 Or maybe there's a search term I can use to find Google images where the image is only its shape and not a rectangle with a white background? 🤔 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Tick Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 It sounds like you are trying to crop into a shape that is not rectangular? I've had to do that in another program, like Paint (if you don't mind brute forcing it) and then posted that back into Word. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chocolate-chip chooky Posted November 12, 2019 Author Share Posted November 12, 2019 1 minute ago, SusanC said: It sounds like you are trying to crop into a shape that is not rectangular? I've had to do that in another program, like Paint (if you don't mind brute forcing it) and then posted that back into Word. Hmmm, I'm off to see if I have Paint.... Goodness, I'm clueless 😗 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweet2ndchance Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 6 minutes ago, chocolate-chip chooky said: Or maybe there's a search term I can use to find Google images where the image is only its shape and not a rectangle with a white background? 🤔 A .jpg file will add a white background when you save as a .jpg file even if the background is transparent in the program you are making the image file in. For an image to retain its transparent background, it would need to be saved as a .png file. .GIF, .TIF and .BMP also support transparency in the original image. If the image you are working with is already a .jpg file, you can remove the white background and resave the image in a file type that supports transparency but I don't know if Paint will do that to be honest. Photoshop and GIMP I know for a fact will allow you to do that though. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Tick Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 If the pay you are trying to remove is all white, that might help. You might be able to open it (or import it) to a free web-based drawing program and then turn that later to transparent. I don't remember any program names though! My dd has self-taught GIMP, so that might work. You can do this (crazy, stupid, frustrating, small but important) task! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chocolate-chip chooky Posted November 12, 2019 Author Share Posted November 12, 2019 I've worked out how to manually crop around the image in Paint, but when I try to paste it to Word, it's now a dodgily-cropped piano in a big white rectangle 😣 2 minutes ago, SusanC said: If the pay you are trying to remove is all white, that might help. You might be able to open it (or import it) to a free web-based drawing program and then turn that later to transparent. I don't remember any program names though! My dd has self-taught GIMP, so that might work. You can do this (crazy, stupid, frustrating, small but important) task! Thank you. I needed the pep talk 👍 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Tick Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 Hmmm, can you export the cropped image to a new file name and then import that? I often have to super zoom in on Paint to crop at the cursed pixel level, then when I zoom out to normal size it looks better. Even better if I can shrink the picture in Word. I find these projects fiddly and super-frustrating, but usually with it when I'm done. Sorry for carrying along all my baggage here! 😂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chocolate-chip chooky Posted November 12, 2019 Author Share Posted November 12, 2019 4 minutes ago, SusanC said: Hmmm, can you export the cropped image to a new file name and then import that? I often have to super zoom in on Paint to crop at the cursed pixel level, then when I zoom out to normal size it looks better. Even better if I can shrink the picture in Word. I find these projects fiddly and super-frustrating, but usually with it when I'm done. Sorry for carrying along all my baggage here! 😂 Because you're investing your time and energy helping me, I'll give you some context. My daughter is making a piano recital program. We're trying to use a painting of hers, but with a grand piano now in it. We don't want to actually paint the piano onto the original painting. So I took a photo of her painting and put that in a word doc and now I'm trying to get a grand piano onto it. (without a white box around it which screams 'imposter!') In Paint, it looks cropped to shape, but when I copy to Word, the cropped piano still has a white box around it. Arrrgghh. Ooh, I just had an idea! Maybe I'll print a little grand piano, trim it with actual real life scissors (I know how to use those!) and lay it over her painting and take a photo. I think that may work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wheres Toto Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 If you have Powerpoint, bring the picture into there, click on the image and go to the Picture Format menu and on the far left will be Remove Background. First let it choose what to delete/keep, but you can select "Mark Areas to Remove" and "Mark Areas to Keep" to adjust it so it only leaves what you want. I use that to put green screen pictures onto random backgrounds but I've also done it with just random pictures. I attached one I did using a picture of dd using her nunchuks which originally had a very busy background in my living room. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chocolate-chip chooky Posted November 12, 2019 Author Share Posted November 12, 2019 Here's our first try...with a bit more tweaking around the legs, it just might be okay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forget-Me-Not Posted November 12, 2019 Share Posted November 12, 2019 Look for free piano .jpgs that have a transparent background. Yours has a white background which is what is causing the problem. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chocolate-chip chooky Posted November 12, 2019 Author Share Posted November 12, 2019 20 minutes ago, Where's Toto? said: If you have Powerpoint, bring the picture into there, click on the image and go to the Picture Format menu and on the far left will be Remove Background. First let it choose what to delete/keep, but you can select "Mark Areas to Remove" and "Mark Areas to Keep" to adjust it so it only leaves what you want. I use that to put green screen pictures onto random backgrounds but I've also done it with just random pictures. I attached one I did using a picture of dd using her nunchuks which originally had a very busy background in my living room. Your cropping is a bit better than mine 😁 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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