This page opens with the smart eraser already in your hand and nothing to download. Drop a photo and paint over the background; the brush stops where the color changes, so the subject's edge survives.
A background eraser that starts with your hand, not a model
Most background tools insist on a detection model before you can touch anything. Here the background eraser opens straight onto your photo with Smart erase selected, a translucent checkerboard showing through wherever you have erased, and no download at all. That makes it the page to use on a slow connection, an older phone or a picture so unusual that automatic detection would only get in the way.
When you would like help, one button runs the person model (26 MB, downloaded once and kept in this browser) and turns your strokes into a starting point rather than throwing them away.
Six ways to take pixels out
The tools are the same ones the rest of the editor uses, so anything you erase here can still get a white backdrop, a shadow or a new scene afterwards.
- Erase and Restore: plain round brushes with size, softness and strength.
- Smart erase and Smart restore: the brush samples the color under its center and fades out where the photo changes color, so a stroke along a sleeve stays on the sleeve.
- Lasso erase and Lasso restore: drag a loop around a large area and it is filled when you let go, which is quicker than brushing a whole sky.
- Wand erase and Wand restore: click a patch of wall or floor and every similar color joined to it is selected, with a tolerance slider for how far it reaches.
- Brackets change the brush size while you paint, Space pans, and the wheel or a pinch zooms.
- Every stroke is one step in undo, and Clear strokes starts the hand work over without touching anything else.
Checking your work
Erasing on a checkerboard hides mistakes, because a few leftover gray pixels look like part of the pattern. Switch the view to On white and On black now and then: stray background shows up against one of them. The Mask view shows exactly what is kept as white on black, which makes small holes easy to spot.
The bar above the canvas counts stray fragments, small holes and unusually wide soft edges, and offers a jump straight to the right view when it finds any.
What it is good at, and where it is slow
Hand erasing is the most reliable way to deal with props, overlapping objects and anything a model mistakes for the subject. It is slow on hair and fur, where thousands of fine strands meet the background. For those, let the person or object model do the first pass and use the eraser only for what it missed, then turn on Hair detail in the edge controls.
Your photo never goes anywhere while you work: it is read into this tab, edited here and saved back to your own disk.
Step by step
- Open your photo. Drop it on the page, browse for it or paste it. Nothing is downloaded.
- Erase the background. Paint with Smart erase, or use Lasso and Wand for large areas.
- Fix mistakes. Switch to Smart restore or Lasso restore to bring parts back.
- Check on white and black. Change the view to find leftover pixels.
- Save. Export a transparent PNG or WebP, or add a background first.
Questions people ask
Do I have to download anything to use the eraser?
No. The brushes, lasso and wand work without any model. The optional detect button downloads the 26 MB person model once if you choose to use it.
What is the difference between Erase and Smart erase?
Erase removes everything under the brush. Smart erase looks at the color under the center of the brush and stops where the photo changes color, so it can run along an edge without biting into the subject.
How does the magic wand decide what to select?
It starts from the pixel you click and spreads to neighboring pixels whose color is within the tolerance. Raise the tolerance to reach further across a gradient, lower it to stop at a faint edge.
Can I combine erasing by hand with automatic detection?
Yes. Press the detect button at any time; the model's result becomes the base and the strokes you already painted are applied on top of it.
Is my photo uploaded while I erase?
No. The picture is read into this browser tab and every stroke is applied here. Nothing about it is sent anywhere.