How to remove the background from a picture

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Drag to compare. Background removed on a Mac with EraseMyBG.

How background removal works

Every background remover does two jobs. First it decides which pixels belong to the subject: older tools used color and edge contrast (the magic wand), modern ones use an AI segmentation model trained to recognise people, animals and objects. Second, it decides how solid each edge pixel is. A strand of hair is thinner than a pixel, so its pixel is part hair, part background; good tools give it partial transparency and remove the background’s color from it, so the cutout doesn’t glow with a halo on its new background.

The result is a mask, and pixels outside it become transparent (an alpha value of 0). If you want to understand transparency itself, the alpha channel and which formats keep it, see how to make an image transparent.

The best way to remove a background, by situation

The 3-step workflow that works for any picture

1. Select the subject. Open the picture in your background remover and let it detect the subject. In EraseMyBG: drag it onto the window, paste with ⌘ V, or right-click it in Finder and choose Erase Background.
2. Refine the edges. Zoom in on hair, fur, fingers and thin straps. Switch to High detail for soft edges, drop subjects you don’t want, and fix mistakes with Erase and Restore brushes. Edge-aware brushes snap to the subject so you don’t have to trace.
3. Decide what goes behind it, then export. Keep it transparent (PNG), or add white, a color, a blur or another photo and export a JPEG. Export at full resolution.

Removing the background from pictures of people

Faces and bodies are easy for any modern tool; hair is where background removers differ. Fast modes produce a smooth outline that clips flyaway strands and often leaves chunks of the old background trapped inside curls. High-detail matting keeps individual strands and makes the gaps between them see-through.

• Use Fast for previews, product shots and quick social posts; use High detail for portraits, headshots and anything with hair.
• Keep Clean edge colors on, so a strand that was in front of a green wall doesn’t stay green.
• For profile pictures and LinkedIn headshots, a soft studio gray or a blurred original background looks more natural than pure white.

Removing the background from pictures of pets

Fur behaves like hair, only more of it, and whiskers are thinner still. Shoot against a background that contrasts with the coat (a black pug against a bright wall is ideal), and use high-detail mode so ear and chest fur stay soft.

Removing the background from product photos

For store listings, marketplaces usually want the product on a plain white background, centered and filling most of the frame. Amazon, for example, requires a pure white background for main images and recommends the product fill about 85% of the frame. Remove the background, place the product on white, and add a soft shadow so it looks placed rather than pasted.

Presets for Shopify (2048 × 2048), Etsy (4:3), eBay and Instagram Stories (9:16) work the same way, and you can apply one preset to a whole folder so every listing matches.

When there are several subjects in the picture

AI removers usually keep every subject they find: two people, a person and a dog, or a row of products. If you only want some of them, you need a way to choose. In EraseMyBG, the Subjects tool shows how many subjects were found; click one to drop it, click again to bring it back.

Logos, signatures and text

Graphics on white paper have no “subject” for an AI model to find, so subject detection cuts letters apart or keeps the whole page. Use a color key that turns the white into transparency instead. Our step-by-step guide to removing a white background covers logos, signatures and scans, including how to avoid the white fringe around edges.

What to put behind your cutout

Once the background is gone, you can leave the area transparent or fill it with something new. The same cutout works with all of these:

• Transparent: for logos, design tools, slides and stickers. Save as PNG. (More on transparency.)
• White: marketplaces, catalogs, passport-style photos.
• Studio gray: headshots, team pages, LinkedIn.
• Brand color or gradient: social posts, thumbnails, ads.
• Blurred original: keeps the setting but adds a portrait-mode look.
• Your own photo: a new location or a product scene.

How to remove a background on every device

Mac

• Finder: right-click the picture › Quick Actions › Remove Background (macOS Sonoma or later). A PNG appears next to the original.
• Preview: Tools › Remove Background, or ⇧ ⌘ K (macOS Ventura or later).
• EraseMyBG: high-detail edges, brushes, subject picking, new backgrounds, presets, batch folders and Finder integration, all offline. $9.99, one-time.

Windows

• Paint (Windows 11): open the picture, click Remove background in the Image group, then save as PNG.
• Word and PowerPoint: Picture Format › Remove Background, mark areas to keep or remove, then Keep Changes.

iPhone and iPad

Open the picture in Photos (iOS 16 or later), touch and hold the subject, then Copy or Share. Sharing to Files saves a transparent PNG.

Android

On Samsung Galaxy phones with One UI 5.1 or later, open the picture in Gallery and touch and hold the subject to copy, share or save the cutout. Google Photos on Android doesn’t do full background removal, so on other phones use an app or a website.

Online and in design apps

Web tools and design apps like Canva remove backgrounds in a browser; Canva’s remover needs a Pro plan. They’re convenient on any device, but the picture is uploaded to their servers and free downloads are often reduced in size. Photoshop’s Remove Background quick action and GIMP’s selection tools give full manual control. Step-by-step instructions for each are in our transparency guide.

Picture background remover tools compared

Tips for a cleaner cutout

• Contrast wins. A subject that stands out from its background (dark on light, colored on plain) gives every tool cleaner edges.
• Start big. Use the original, full-size picture. Edges can’t be recovered from a small, compressed copy.
• Avoid motion blur and heavy backlight. Blurred edges and bright halos behind hair are the hardest cases for any remover.
• Check on dark and light. Before exporting, view the cutout on both; halos show on dark, missing hair shows on light.
• Keep the shadow on purpose. Removers drop shadows with the background. Add a soft contact shadow back for products so they don’t look like they’re floating.
• Save the right format. PNG for transparency, JPEG only when the new background is opaque. If transparency turns white after saving, see why that happens.

Frequently asked questions