Automatic background removal can be astonishingly good or oddly ragged, depending mostly on the photo you give it. A little care when you take the picture saves far more time than fixing the result afterwards.
How the remover decides
Our Remove background page uses a small artificial intelligence model that runs on your own computer. It looks at the picture and decides which parts are the main subject and which are background, then makes the background see-through and saves a PNG. The model works on shapes and colours, so it does best when the subject stands clearly apart from what is behind it.
Photograph the subject to help the tool
A few choices when you take the photo make a large difference:
- Use a plain background that differs from the subject. A white wall behind a dark jumper is easy. A green hedge behind a green coat is hard.
- Leave a little space between the subject and the background, so the edge is not lost in a shadow.
- Use even light. Strong shadows and bright patches can be mistaken for part of the subject.
- Fill the frame sensibly. A subject that is too small in the picture gives the model few pixels to work with.
What is hard, and what to expect
Fine hair, fur, glass, smoke, netting and subjects the same colour as their background are the hardest. The cut-out may take a bite out of a thin strand or leave a faint halo. This is a limit of every automatic tool, not just ours. Product photos, people against plain walls, pets and objects with solid edges usually come out very well.
Check the edges
When the page says Background removed, the picture appears on a checkerboard, which means see-through. Look closely at the edges at full size. Are there small leftover pieces of the old background? Has anything that belongs to the subject gone? If so, try again with a photo taken against a plainer background, or crop the photo so the subject is larger in the frame.
Finish the job
The result is a PNG with a see-through background, which you can place on anything. For a product photo on a shop page, put it on a plain white or light grey background in your slide or design program. For a profile picture, place it on a solid colour. If you need a particular size, run the PNG through Resize image afterwards; it keeps the see-through parts.
JPG cannot be see-through, so do not save the result as a JPG unless you want a white background.
The first visit takes longer
The first time you use the page, it downloads the cut-out engine, which is about 19 megabytes, and shows a bar while it does. Your browser keeps it afterwards, so later visits start straight away. Each photo then takes a few seconds on a typical computer. Older computers and phones take longer, and the bar shows it is still working.
Only use pictures you have the right to edit, and respect other people's photos.