You have a good photo of a person, but the room, the street or the crowd behind them is wrong. To remove the background, open the photo here. The person is found, the background goes, and you can save the result as a cut-out on a transparent background or on a plain colour of your choice.
Think of it as a background remover made for people. It cuts out one person or several, from a portrait to a full-body shot, and the edge follows the hair and the outline of your full-size photo. It is free, with no account and no watermark. Below: how to remove the background from a photo, what to expect at the edges, where your photo goes, and when another tool is the better choice.
How to remove the background from a photo
- Press Select images, or drop a photo of a person onto the page. JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, HEIC, GIF, BMP, TIFF and ICO pictures all open, one at a time.
- Wait a moment while the person is found. The editor stays locked until the cut-out is ready.
- Pick a Background: Transparent, White, Light grey, Ink, or any colour you like.
- Choose Save as: PNG or WebP. With a background colour, JPG is offered too.
- Press Remove background and save the picture at full size. The file name ends in _cutout, so it sits beside your original.
The stage shows the result over a checkerboard, the usual sign for transparent. Hold to compare shows the original photo again, so you can judge the edge against it.
Which photos work, and which do not
This tool is made for photos of people: a portrait, a half-body shot or a full-body shot, with one person or several. It is not made for products, logos or pets. A statue or a mannequin may be taken for a person, and that can look odd.
If no person is found, the page tells you so and saves nothing. Another photo is what helps: try one where the person is larger in the picture, or better lit.
| Picture | Use |
|---|---|
| A portrait or a selfie | Remove background |
| Two friends standing in a park | Remove background |
| A full-body photo on a street | Remove background |
| A logo or an icon on plain white | Make image transparent |
| A product on a plain backdrop | Make image transparent, if the backdrop is one even colour |
| A pet or an object in a busy scene | Neither: this tool is not made for them |
Transparent, or a colour behind the person
Background starts on Transparent, which keeps no background at all. That is the choice for a cut-out you will place on a slide, a poster or a web page. Pick White, Light grey or Ink for a plain studio look, or choose any colour to match a brand or a profile picture frame. A colour is saved behind the person, so the file needs nothing else done to it.
Save as decides the file type:
- PNG keeps every pixel and the transparency. It is the safe choice for a cut-out.
- WebP also keeps transparency, and is saved at high quality. It suits websites.
- JPG is offered only when you have picked a background colour, because JPG has no transparency.
If you want to remove the background from a photo and then round its corners, finish the job with Round image corners. For a plain white backdrop that is not a person, the remove white background page starts with everything set for that job.
What to expect at the edges
The result is good for most portraits, but some things are hard for any background remover, and it is better to know them before you save.
- Fine, fly-away hair comes out as a soft edge, not as single crisp strands. It can also keep a faint tint of the old background.
- Thin things held away from the body, such as a selfie stick or a stand, can be lost.
- Where clothes and background are the same dark colour, the edge there is softer.
Check the result on the checkerboard and with Hold to compare before you save. If a pale or dark fringe shows, try another Background: a colour close to the old background often hides it, and a very different colour shows it. Take the photo against a background that differs from the clothes and hair, and the edge comes out cleaner.
Where your photo goes, and what it costs
Most image tools here never upload anything. This one needs our server's help to find the person, so it is different, and we say so plainly. As soon as you open a photo, a small copy of it, at most 1024 pixels across, goes to our server. The copy is made fresh from the pixels, so it carries no camera or location details.
The server holds the copy only in memory and deletes it as soon as the cut-out is sent back. It is never stored or logged. Your full-size photo stays on your device, and the background is removed in your browser at the photo's full size. Read more on the privacy page.
It is free, with no account and no watermark. On the Free plan our server finds the person in up to 20 photos a day, and Pro raises the allowance. This is its own allowance, not the daily limit for document conversions. It works in current Chrome, Edge and Firefox, and very large pictures may be too big for your browser.
Remove the background now
Select a photo of a person above, pick a Background and press Remove background. Check the edge against the original, then save a PNG or WebP at full size. To relight the same cut-out photo, try Add light to image.
It is free, with no account and no watermark. All image tools are listed on the image tools page.
