Background remover

Deletes a flat, evenly lit background and exports the subject on transparency, working outward from the edges of the image.

By The FreeImageEditor editorial teamLast reviewed How we test

Drop an image here

JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP, AVIF, HEIC, TIFF · up to 60 MB · processed on your device

Background pixels connected to the edge cleared to transparency.

How to use it

  1. 1Add the image. Product shots, logos and scans against one colour work best.
  2. 2Raise the tolerance until the background disappears, and stop before the subject starts eating away.
  3. 3Add one or two pixels of edge softening if the cut-out looks jagged, then download the PNG.

What this tool actually does

It samples the four corners of your image, then flood-fills inward from every border pixel, clearing anything whose colour sits within your tolerance of that sample. Because the fill only travels through connected pixels, a dark shirt in the middle of the frame is never touched even if the background is also dark.

That makes it exact and instant on studio-style images: a white product shot, a logo on a solid card, a scanned signature, a passport-style headshot against a plain wall. It is not a segmentation model, so a subject photographed against a street, a garden or a busy room is the wrong job for it — nothing here pretends otherwise.

Getting a clean edge

Tolerance is the whole game. Around 12 to 18 suits a clean white sweep; a wall with lighting falloff usually needs 25 to 35. If the background clears but a grey halo survives, that halo is JPEG compression noise — nudge tolerance up by five and it goes.

Edge softening fades pixels that touch cleared ones, which removes the stair-stepping you get on curves. One pixel is right for logos and text, two for photographed objects. More than that eats fine detail like hair and thin cables.

Why the output is always PNG

JPEG has no alpha channel, so saving a cut-out as JPG puts the background straight back as solid black or white. PNG carries per-pixel transparency, which is what a cut-out needs. WebP also supports alpha and is smaller, so if the result is going on a web page, run the PNG through the converter afterwards.

Frequently asked questions

Will it work on a photo of a person outdoors?
No. It removes backgrounds that are one continuous colour connected to the frame edge. A varied outdoor scene will only partially clear, and the page tells you that before you upload rather than after.
The subject has holes in it now. What went wrong?
Your tolerance is too high, so colours inside the subject match the background sample. Lower it in steps of five until the holes close.
Does the image leave my device?
No. The flood fill runs on the canvas pixel buffer in your tab. You can disconnect from the network and the tool still works.