I followed the instructions in How to use Preview for Basic Image Editing: Remove Backgrounds and Extract Shapes to use the Preview app to remove backgrounds with an image. The problem is that the "Instant Alpha" tool sometimes does not capture all the pixels and can't figure out how to use the rectangle tool to remove those remaining pixels. I tried highlighting the pixels and then pressing delete but it doesn't work. Can someone explain how to do it or recommend another free, lightweight Mac OS X tool to remove background to make it transparent? I do not want to use Photoshop or anything else expensive.
MacOS – the quickest Mac OS X app to use to remove the background of an image to make it transparent
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Best Answer
You said "free," but you also mentioned "nothing expensive like Photoshop"; there are solutions to your problem that do cost something but are nowhere nearly as expensive as Photoshop.
Pixelmator is great for certain kinds of quick image editing. It's only $30 right now, though that will probably go up when the next major release finally comes out; I believe it's normally $60.
There's also Acorn, which is very similar and perhaps a hair's breadth easier to use, though since they've already had their first post-App Store major version release, it's more expensive at the moment ($50).
If it absolutely must be freeware, do have a look at Seashore, mentioned in a comment by Ian C.