Few people forget their first love, but most don’t want to be reminded of their ex on a daily basis.

Johnny Depp’s solution, to turn his Winona tattoo into Wino, is one way to deal with people who literally get under your skin. Tattoo artists say they are often asked to rework old tattoos to obscure names, but if you’re really intent on a clean slate, other options exist. Be warned, however, few are cheap, most are painful, and none guarantee complete success.

The easiest, most affordable but probably least effective tattoo removal process comes in a tube. All tattoos fade to some degree over time if exposed to sunlight. Topical creams aim to speed and maximize fading by bringing the tattooed layer of skin closer to the surface and prevent the pigment from spreading to new layers of skin.

After extensive product testing, the Tattoo Removal Association ranked Tat-Med, Profade, Wrecking Balm, Tat B Gone and Tattoo Fading (in that order) as the most effective and safest products on the market in 2010.

The association, however, warns consumers about creams containing harmful chemicals, such as Hydroquinone (a carcinogen that has been banned in a number of countries) and Trichloroacetic Acid, which literally burns off layers of skin.

Professional removal options include dermabrasion (sanding the skin off); salabrasion (using a salt block to rub the skin off); excision (cutting the tattoo out and stitching the skin back together); and skin grafts. Because these techniques can result in scarring, however, the most popular and effective professional procedure is laser tattoo removal.

More painful than getting a tattoo

At the Center for Facial Plastic Surgery and Laser Skin Care in Albany, N.Y., cosmetic surgeon Dr. Arthur Falk uses high-energy, rapid-pulsed lasers to break up the pigment in tattoo ink. Black, blue, and red are the easiest to disperse while yellow and green have staying power that makes them difficult to eliminate.

In 2007, New York-based company Freedom2 produced a new tattoo ink made of smaller molecules encased in polymers that could be dissolved and dispersed completely after just one laser treatment. The product, called Infinitink, has yet to be widely embraced by tattoo artists, however, who prefer to think of their art as permanent.

If you thought getting the tattoo was painful, brace yourself. Even with a topical anesthetic, laser tattoo removal is more painful, and the process typically requires six to eight treatments — if not more — over the course of at least as many months to give skin time to heal between each procedure. The price of removal is based on the size of the tattoo, but it’s not cheap. A tattoo that cost less than $100 could cost thousands to remove.