SMD ics are piece of cake to remove by either a heat gun or IR welder.
My favorite way of removing smd ics is by heat gun, I hold the ic with a tweezer and lift up slightly so that the weight of the board puts downward pressure. When applying heat gun to the ic temp melts solder and board drops down then I remove heat gun immediately. this way I expose ic to minimum time under heat.
For DIP ics conventional methods usually harm the board. If I'm sure the dip ic is bad I use disc cutter and cut the pins from top of ic horizontally so that cutting disc does not touch the board.
then I remove the ic package and we are left with pins soldered to the board which can be removed individually by soldering iron and a tweezer. then with a desoldering pump I can remove the solder making the pad hole perfect as new with no damage to the PCB whatever.
There are other effective methods to remove dip ics but they don't work for all boards because heat usually cracks the board.
Mahmood