How do I use Back Drop?

Did you know you can increase engagement by up to 40% when image backgrounds are enhanced. Make your images stand out with Image+ Back Drop. Image+ Back Drop allows you to select areas of background to blur, remove and replace with color or replace with a new image (including a new AI generated image).

Assumptions: (i) You have installed and activated Image+; (ii) You have navigated to the Image+ Library and added an image to Image+ ; (iii) you have navigated to the editor for your target Image+

User Note: If you don't see the Image+ Enhancement Settings, including Back Drop settings, ensure you have selected your Image+ for editing (by clicking on the main image whilst in add or edit mode) and also ensure you are viewing the non-Baseline image (by clicking on any image that isn't the Baseline image in the right-hand column, "Block" panel). 

1. Highlight Areas Of Image To Drop

Tell the AI which areas of your image you want to Drop or Keep. Simply mark with your mouse the areas on the image that you want to Drop or Keep, and the AI will figure out where the boundaries are between the background and foreground. You can add areas back in with by highlighting the chosen area and selecting the “Keep” option and keep making as many adjustments as necessary until the background and foreground are clearly separated.

2. Select Drop Style

You can apply one of a few different drop styles, including:

i) Color (Set Transparency Or New Color): this allows you to remove the background to replace it with a new background color or transparency e.g. Adding a transparent background to a product photo to make the product stand out. Research has shown that simply making an image background transparent can increase engagement by up to 40% (Source: Microsoft). Image+ uses AI to analyze your image and suggest suitable background colors. Anyone can make their images look amazing.

ii) Blur (Blurring the background): this softens the background and makes the remaining image not blurred stand out. Great for highlighting products or people in a sophisticated way. The blur (a type of broad gaussian blur) effect can be reduced or enhanced with the Blur slider or numerical value settings, with lower being less effect and a greater blur effect. Blur options also include: 

 a) “Melt”: using an animation technique to introduce or apply the blur slowly; and

 b) “Grayscale” to remove color from the background - can also be combined with blurring. Another eye-catching effect is to grayscale the background of your image, leaving your selected foreground in full color.

Select “Blur”, and use the Grayscale switch to convert the background of your image into grayscale.

You can blur the grayscale background or leave it in sharp focus.

iii) Image (Change Background Image): this allows you to change or replace the background with a new image. The new image can be provided to Image+ via Upload, URL, Media Library (WordPress Media Library) or generated with our “Text-to-image” Image Generator. This last option, which allows you to 'Generate from words' is a useful option when replacing the background of your image, because you can imagine and describe the perfect background for your image. You can also choose to blur or grayscale the background image. When using the "Text-to-image" Image Generator, you can generate additional imagery from the initial suggestions and also see how many image generation credits you have remaining. Note: the number of generated images rendered by default is configurable within Image+ Settings.

3. Saving & Using/Embedding

You can now save the image and use/embed your new enhanced Image+ accordingly.

BEFORE (Original Image)

Photo by Angela Roma.

AFTER (Back Drop Applied)

Backdrop Applied. Blur: 9, Melt, Grayscale.

Backdrop Applied. Color: Transparency.

Backdrop Applied. Image: Text-to-image: "Rome, Tourist Area, In Front Of Fountain".