The company, which has two staff in Copenhagen and 13 in Cebu City in the Philippines and also provides colour restoration claims to save around a third on costs of conventional graphic artists.

"Costs of graphic artists in the Philippines are up to 30% lower than those of European graphic artists," said LazyMask graphic sales and marketing consultant Lisa Petersen.

The company said that it offered an "easy-to-use uploading system, low prices and masking speed". Typical masking rates were 1.51 (2.25) for a 10-minute job and 10.60 for an hour.

LazyMask was launched in July this year. Petersen said the Philippines was "an obvious choice when it came to graphics jobs."

"It is one of the biggest English-speaking countries in the world". He said the country's institutions, based on the US model, made it "simple to set up a business".

Factfile
Based in Denmark and the Philippines, LazyMask offers

- Clipping paths

- Image outlining

- Picture restoration

- Colour correction

- Retouching