Make a photo background transparent Keep the subject, lose the background.
Save a clean PNG with nothing behind it.
or drop it here · paste with Ctrl+V
Free · No sign-up · Photos stay on your device
Works with JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC from an iPhone, GIF and BMP.
Open a photograph and save the subject with nothing behind it — a PNG or WebP whose alpha channel carries the outline, previewed over a checkerboard, with the edge cleaned of the old background first.
What this mode does
The canvas opens with no ground at all. What you see over the checkerboard is what the file will hold: the subject, its edge as a range of opacities, and nothing else. JPEG is not offered here, because JPEG has no way to store transparency.
The edge controls matter more without a ground than with one. On a ground, a faint ring of the old wall blends into the new colour; on transparency it lands on whatever page the cutout is placed on next. Unmixing takes that colour back out of the part-covered pixels, and edge shift pulls the outline in by a fraction of a pixel when a line survives.
Steps
- Open the photographA subject against a plain, contrasting wall gives the cleanest edge from colour alone. Products and pets do best with the any-subject model.
- Look at the edgeZoom to 1:1 over the checkerboard. A pale or dark line around the hair is old background; unmix it, then shift the edge in by a quarter or half a pixel.
- Choose PNG or WebPPNG is lossless and opens everywhere. WebP with alpha is usually a third of the size and is accepted by most design tools and browsers.
- Save, then read the receiptThe saved file is decoded again: the receipt states how much of the frame came back fully transparent and that the format carries alpha.
PNG or WebP for a cutout
Choose PNG when the file is going into a document, a slide, a print workflow or an older editor: every one of them reads PNG transparency. Choose WebP when the cutout is going onto a web page, where the same edge in a far smaller file loads faster.
A shadow can be kept. It is written as semi-transparent dark pixels, so it darkens whatever the cutout is later placed on — right for a light page, wrong for a dark one.
What it cannot do
- Hair against a busy room is the hard case. Without a ground to blend into, every stray strand of the old room shows; the hair-and-veil model and the refine-edge brush are the tools for it.
- Glass, smoke and motion blur do not have one opacity per pixel. They come out as solid or as a smudge, never as true see-through.
- There is no generated background here and no upscaling: the cutout keeps the photograph's own pixels.
Questions about transparent background
Why does the preview show a grey and white checkerboard?
Because that is how an image editor draws nothing. The checkerboard is not in the file; it shows through wherever the saved PNG or WebP is transparent, so what you see over it is exactly what will be written.
Can I save a transparent JPG?
No format called JPEG can hold transparency, so this page does not offer it here. A JPEG of a cutout would have to fill the transparent area with some colour, which is a ground again — use the white or colour routes for that.
The hair has a light outline on a dark page. How do I remove it?
Turn on unmixing if it is off, then move Edge shift to about −0.5 px. The outline is the old wall carried in part-covered pixels; unmixing removes its colour and the shift trims the outermost band.
How big will the file be?
A twelve-megapixel portrait cutout is typically several megabytes as PNG and well under one as WebP. The exact byte count is printed on the Save button after the first save, and the receipt repeats it.
Is the cutout uploaded to make it?
No. The outline is worked out in this tab, by arithmetic or by an on-device model you choose to download, and the file is written by the tab. There is no server behind this domain that could receive a photograph.
Related
- Add background to PNGA file that already has transparency keeps its own outline; choose what goes behind it.
- Product photo backgroundPure white, a listing square, Fit to 85% and a receipt that checks the fill.
- Background colour changerAny colour behind the subject: a full picker, hex, RGB and OKLCH, and an eyedropper that reads your own photo.
- Hair, fur and glassesWhat an edge can and cannot be recovered from.
The image you open is read by this page and by nothing else — there is no server behind this domain that could receive it, the outline is worked out inside your own browser either by arithmetic or by an on-device model, and if you ask for a model it is the model that is downloaded to you rather than your photo being sent to it.
