Remove Background From Image Cut out anything in one tap.

What the starting setup does

Auto mode first runs a tiny face finder, about 0.2 MB, to see whether the picture is mainly of a person. If it spots one it loads the person model; otherwise it uses the object model, which suits products, animals, vehicles and other things. If Auto guesses wrong, switch models yourself in the Cut out stage.

The result appears over a gray-and-white checkerboard. That pattern is not part of your image; it is the usual way of showing empty pixels, and it vanishes once you place the file somewhere else.

Export is set to PNG because almost every program reads its transparency correctly. WebP keeps the empty area too, if you would like a smaller file.

Checking the cutout before you save

A cutout can look tidy on the checkerboard and still carry a faint rim of the old background. Switch the inspection view to On white and then On black, since a halo shows up against one or the other. The Mask view shows the selection itself in black and white, which makes holes inside the subject easy to spot.

To compare with the photo you started from, hold the compare button, drag the before-and-after slider, or set the two side by side.

Fixing edges by hand

Erase clears leftover background, and Restore paints back parts of the subject the model missed. The smart versions follow color edges, so a stroke along a sleeve stays on the sleeve. Size, softness and strength are all adjustable, and undo and redo cover every stroke.

For the outline as a whole, the edge controls do the heavy lifting:

• Feather softens a hard, cut-paper border.
• Shift edge pulls the boundary inward or pushes it outward by a few pixels.
• Smooth evens out a jagged outline.
• Remove fringe neutralizes color left over from the old backdrop.
• Hair detail holds on to fine strands that would otherwise be clipped.

Logos and signatures without a model

Flat artwork does not need detection at all. Choose color removal, click the background color, and raise the tolerance until the paper or backdrop is gone. The connected-only switch limits removal to the region touching the spot you clicked, which protects matching colors inside the design, and a little feather keeps the edges from looking crunchy.

Where removal struggles

Anything translucent, like glass or smoke, is difficult because there is no clean line between subject and backdrop. The same goes for edges smeared by movement, hair in front of cluttered scenes, subjects that match their surroundings, very dark photos and groups where people overlap. Expect to spend a minute or two with the brushes on pictures like those.

A little preparation at the camera saves time later. Stand the subject a step or two away from the wall so it does not cast a shadow onto it, choose a backdrop that differs in color from the subject, and keep the focus on the edges you care about. Detection works from what it can see, and a clear boundary in the photo becomes a clean boundary in the cutout.

Step by step

1. Open your photo. Drop it on the page, browse for it or paste it from the clipboard.
2. Wait for the cutout. Auto chooses a model, downloads it once if needed and separates the subject.
3. Inspect the edges. View the result On white and On black to look for halos.
4. Touch up. Use Erase, Restore or the edge controls wherever the outline needs work.
5. Save the PNG. Export at full size or scale it down, then download or copy it.

Questions people ask