Making your pasted image selections or objects blend naturally with a different base image is one of the most common problems that you will have to deal with in photo editing. Any selection or object will always have traces of the original image from which it was taken. Hence, when it is pasted on a new background, there will be an obvious difference in terms of edge pixels, making the resulting image look crude and unnatural.

PhotoImpact offers two ways to make your image selection or object blend in nicely with any background: Defringe and Match Background Color. These two chameleon features are similar in effect, yet different in function. Defringe blends the object's edges with the background by removing unnecessary pixels and setting redundant ones to transparent. It then creates a seamless transition between your selection or object and your background.

Match Background Color, on the other hand, blends an object with its background based on color similarity. It locates regions in the object similar in color to the base image then replaces them with a similar tint. This function, however, requires that the objects and base images you work with have certain color similarity.

Try the tutorials below to better understand the concepts behind these two features.