Even the most basic photo editors can do some pretty cool effects. You no longer need to buy expensive software to have fun with your photos.

One of the neatest tricks is to change the background of a photo. This lets you put your subject anywhere in the world – or even out of this world. Removing the original background can be a real challenge, though.

Chromagic is an easy, free tool that does the hard work for you. It works by turning certain colors transparent. You use the crosshairs to pick which color you want to get rid of.

Obviously, this works best if your background is a uniform color. Once you've removed the background, you can save the image. Now you can stack the background-free image on top of a new background.

Cost: Free

Link: cybia.co.uk

System: Windows XP, Vista, 7