In our Give Your Kids The IT Edge feature in the new issue of PC Pro (which should be with subscribers shortly, and goes on sale on 16 July), we promised to show you how to create a cut-out photo. This will allow you to put your child into their very own computer game, using the Scratch software.

To create your cut-out you’ll need to take a full-length digital photo of your child on a plain (preferably white) background. We’re going to use the free photo-editing software, Paint.Net, but any decent photo-editing package should have similar controls.

1. Open the photo of your child in Paint.Net and select the Magic Wand tool from the left-hand toolbar.

2. In the Magic Wand toolbar at the top, turn the tolerance down to around 10%.

3. Now click on the background of the photo. You should see the photo of your child is surrounded by flashing dotted lines, as shown below.

4. You’ll probably notice that there are some smaller areas, such as the white space between the child’s arm in our photo, that haven’t been removed. Hold down the Control key and click on the white space to remove them from the photo.

5. You might find that tricky areas with shadows (such as the space between our boy’s feet) aren’t very easy to remove. Increase the tolerance up to 15% to make these easier to remove, and try again, remembering to hold down the Control key while you work. Experiment with higher levels of tolerance for hard to shift areas.

6. Once you’ve got all the background successfully selected, click Edit | Erase Selection. You should see something like the image below.

7. Now save the file as a GIF, or in the format of your choice if you’re not using it for the game.