Free Background Remover

How to Use It

1. Drop your image in. Nothing uploads. The picture is drawn onto a canvas in this tab.
2. Try Auto from edges first. It walks in from all four borders and clears anything that matches the border colour.
3. If the background is not touching an edge, switch to Click a colour and click the exact patch you want gone.
4. Raise the tolerance until the background disappears, then stop. Push it too far and it starts eating the subject.
5. Add a little edge softness so the cut does not look sharp and pasted.
6. Download the PNG. JPG cannot hold transparency, so the download is always PNG.

What It Handles Well, and What It Does Not

This tool separates by colour, not by understanding what is in the picture. That makes it fast and private, and it also sets a clear limit on what it can do.

When the Photo Is Too Complex, Do It in GIMP

Anything with hair, fur, smoke or a soft focus edge needs a real mask rather than a colour key. The short version of the GIMP workflow is:

1. Right click the layer and choose Add Alpha Channel, otherwise erasing paints the background colour instead of clearing it.
2. Make a rough selection with Free Select or Foreground Select.
3. Add a layer mask from that selection instead of pressing Delete, so you can repair mistakes later.
4. Paint on the mask with a soft black brush to hide, a white brush to bring back.
5. Export as PNG. Saving as JPG throws the transparency away and fills it with black.

The full background removal guide walks through all five methods with screenshots, and layer masks explained covers the masking part in depth.

Common Questions

Why is my downloaded image still on white?

Two usual causes. Either the file was saved as JPG somewhere along the way, which cannot store transparency, or the program you opened it in shows transparency as white. Check it with the transparency checker.

There is a thin coloured line around my subject

That is a halo, left over from pixels that were half background and half subject. Raise Trim halo to 1 or 2, and add a point of edge softness.

Can I remove the background from several images at once?

Not here, since each one needs its own colour choice. For a folder of images shot on the same backdrop, the Script-Fu generator can build a batch script that runs the same operation across the whole folder in GIMP.

Does it work on my phone?

Yes. Large photos take a few seconds longer because everything is computed on the device.