Remove, change or make a background

Most background removers work by receiving your photo: it is uploaded, cut out on a server, and a result is sent back — often a small one, with the full-size file behind a credit. This site works the other way round. The first time you cut something out, the page downloads a segmentation model into your browser, and from then on every picture is processed on your own machine, on its graphics card where the browser allows it and on the processor where it does not.

Three things follow from that, and they are the whole case for the site. The file is full size, because there is nothing to charge for. Nothing is retained, because nothing is received. And after the first run the tool works on a train with no signal.

A cut-out is half a job. The other half is what the subject should stand on, and this is where the site differs from a remover with a colour picker bolted on. Behind any cut-out you can put nothing (a transparent PNG), a flat colour, the photograph’s own background softened, another picture of yours, or a background drawn by this site’s generator — a gradient, a lit field, a mesh or a grain surface, rendered at the photograph’s exact pixel size rather than stretched from a stock file.

The edge between the two is cleaned rather than just cut. Where the model leaves partial transparency — hair, fur, a soft shoulder — the colour of the old background is estimated from its surroundings and taken out of those pixels, so a subject shot against green does not carry a green rim onto a white page.

1. Glass, water and anything else you can see through. The model decides what is subject and what is not; it has no idea that a wine glass should be ninety percent transparent, so it will keep the glass solid or drop it. The brush can fix the outline, but not give glass back its transparency.
2. A subject the same colour as the wall behind it. White sleeves on a white wall, a black cat on a black sofa — the edge is guessed rather than seen. Use the object model, then the smart-edge brush along the boundary.
3. Very large pictures on a phone. The matte is computed on a copy about 1400 pixels across and brought up to full size for the file, which keeps phones responsive; on a 50-megapixel photo the finest hair is softer than a desktop editor at 100% would draw it.

Is it free, and is the download full size?

Both. There is no account, no credit, no watermark and no smaller preview file that a payment would unlock. The file that downloads is the size of the picture you dropped, because the cut-out is computed on your machine and there is nothing to meter.

Where does my picture go?

Nowhere. The page downloads a model to the picture rather than sending the picture to a model. You can check it: open the browser's network panel, drop a photo, and watch — the only large request is the model itself, the first time, and it carries nothing of yours.

Why does the first cut-out take longer?

The model has to arrive once: 25 MB for the portrait model, 84 MB for the one that handles objects. The browser keeps it, so the second picture starts at once and the page works with no connection at all after that. The size is shown before anything downloads, with an estimate for your connection.

remove.bg is closing. Does this do the same job?

It does the same core job — a picture in, the background out, a transparent PNG back — plus colour, blur and drawn backgrounds, a bulk queue and a ZIP. What it does not have is an API for other programs to call, because nothing here runs on a server. The remove.bg page on this site sets out what changes on 1 December 2026 and what to use for each part of what it did.

Which pictures does it get wrong?

Glass and other see-through things, fine hair against a busy background of the same colour, and white products on white. Each has a remedy — the object model, the smart-edge brush, a contact shadow — and each route's page names the limits that apply to it rather than promising a perfect edge.

Nothing here is sent anywhere. Pictures are cut out and backgrounds drawn by your browser, and the file is written to your disk.

• remove.bg is closingWhat ends on 1 December 2026, and where each part of the job lives now.
• The written pagesThree longer arguments, each one a number the control panel has no room to explain.
• Choosing a background text can sit onEvaluate contrast, local variation and safe placement before putting text over a generated background.
• LibraryForty starting points, each one a stack that stays editable.