Cut a person out of a photo and save them on a transparent background, ready to drop onto a poster, a slide, a greeting card or a background of your own. This page opens Photo background with Remove already chosen.
The cut-out is made in your browser by an on-device person detector, so selfies, family pictures and photos of children stay on your device instead of going to a server.
How to remove a background
- Drop a photo in which the person is clearly in view.
- Wait a moment while the person is found. On your first visit the detector, about 20 MB, is downloaded from this site.
- Drag across the preview to compare before and after. The chequered pattern shows where the picture is now transparent.
- Raise Edge softness for a gentler outline, or lower it for a crisper one.
- Choose PNG or WebP under Save as and select "Save photo".
PNG or WebP?
JPEG has no transparency, so a cut-out is saved as PNG or WebP. PNG opens almost everywhere, including older programs and print shops, but the file is larger. WebP is smaller and works in modern browsers and most current apps.
Transparent pixels have no colour, so a picture viewer may show them as white, black or a chequered pattern. That is normal: the transparency is there when you place the picture on top of something else.
Getting a clean edge
- Use a photo where the person stands out from the background in colour and brightness.
- Keep the whole head inside the frame. Hair cut off by the edge of the photo ends in a straight line.
- Fine strands of hair are kept where they differ from the background. Against a wall of a similar colour, or with reflections in glasses, the edge may come out patchy.
- The old background's colour is taken out of the soft edge, so the cut-out doesn't carry a coloured halo onto its new background.
Frequently asked questions
Can it remove the background from a product or a logo?
No. The detector is trained to find people, so objects, pets and logos are treated as background. It suits portraits, selfies and group photos.
Is the cut-out the same size as my photo?
Yes, it keeps the full width and height of the original. Only very large photos on iPhones and iPads are saved a little smaller, and the note gives the size used.
I need a white background, not a transparent one. What should I do?
Choose Change colour on Photo background and pick White. A white background saved as JPEG is what most forms expect, and the file is smaller than a transparent PNG. For an ID photo, Passport & ID photo also crops it to size.
Does my photo go to a server to be cut out?
No. Both the detection and the cut-out run in your browser tab, and the result is saved straight to your device. The only download is the detector itself, from this site.
Why doesn't it work in my browser?
The detector needs WebAssembly and WebGL. An up-to-date Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari has both; some older phones and locked-down work computers don't.