Remove the background from a picture

Drop the picture, or paste it straight from the clipboard. If this is your first cut-out, the page shows the size of the model it needs and a time estimate for your connection, and waits for you to agree. After that it runs by itself.

The model draws a mask: a value between nought and one for every pixel, saying how much of it is subject. The page then cleans the soft edge of that mask, takes the old background colour out of the pixels that are part-transparent, and shows the result over a checkerboard. What you see is what the PNG will contain.

Open Refine edges. The Erase brush removes, the Restore brush brings back, and with smart edges on each stroke only changes pixels that are close in colour to the one under the centre of the brush. Run it along a shoulder against a pale wall and it takes the wall and leaves the shirt. Every stroke is recorded, so Undo steps back exactly, and the full-size file replays the same strokes at full size.

1. Transparent and reflective objects. A glass, a window or a pair of spectacles is either kept solid or dropped; the model does not produce partial transparency for glass.
2. Groups where only one person should stay. The portrait model keeps every person it finds. Erase the others with the brush.
3. Tiny subjects in a wide scene. A person who is a few dozen pixels tall in a landscape photo is below what the model sees clearly; crop closer first.

Does removing the background lower the resolution?

No. The model looks at a copy about 1400 pixels across, because that is the scale it was trained at, and the mask it draws is then scaled back up to your picture's own size and applied to the original pixels. A 4000-pixel photo comes back as a 4000-pixel PNG.

Which model should I use?

The portrait model for anything with a person in it: it is small, fast, and keeps hair as soft partial transparency rather than a hard outline. The object model for products, pets, cars, food and logos. If the portrait model finds nobody, the page offers the object model rather than returning an empty frame.

Why is there a faint halo around hair on a new background?

Hair pixels are part hair and part whatever was behind it. The page estimates that background colour from the surrounding pixels and subtracts it before saving, which removes most of the halo. What is left is usually fixed by one pass of the Erase brush with smart edges on.

Can I remove the background from a screenshot or a logo?

Yes, but if the background is one flat colour, the remove-white-background page does it without a model, instantly, and keeps the inside of letters that a model might fill in.

• Transparent backgroundA PNG with a real alpha channel, for logos, products and stickers.
• Change backgroundThe subject on a colour, a blur, your own picture or a drawn background.
• Bulk background removerMany pictures, one setting, one ZIP. No credits.
• remove.bg is closingWhat ends on 1 December 2026, and where each part of the job lives now.