Step-by-step guide
How to change an image background
Five steps, all of them in a browser tab, none of them requiring an account or an upload. This is the long version — if you would rather just do it, the editor is open and the first three steps are “drop a file in”.
The five steps
From a photo to a finished file
The order matters in one place only: the edge controls are worth touching after you have chosen the new background, because a halo you cannot see against a busy backdrop is obvious against flat white.
- STEP 01
Open the editor and add your photo
Open the editor and drag a photo onto it, choose one from your files, or paste one from the clipboard. PNG, JPG, WebP and AVIF are all accepted, and you can add several files at once.
Nothing is uploaded at this point or at any later one — the file is read straight from your disk into a canvas in the tab. Adding several files fills the queue on the left, and everything from here applies to whichever one you have selected.
- STEP 02
Wait for the automatic cutout
The segmentation model runs on your device and separates the subject from the background in a second or two. No account, no queue and no upload wait.
The Fast model — U²-Net small · 4.4 MB — has usually finished loading before you have finished dragging, so the first result appears almost immediately. The Quality model — IS-Net int8 · 42 MB — downloads behind it and takes over when it is ready.
- STEP 03
Choose what goes behind the subject
Pick a background: none for a transparent PNG, a solid colour, a two-stop gradient, a blurred copy of the original scene, or an image of your own.
Blur is the one to reach for on a portrait, because the light behind the subject still matches the light on them. A flat colour is the one for a product listing, where the marketplace tells you which colour to use.
- STEP 04
Clean up the edge
Adjust cutout sensitivity, feather and shrink to remove any halo left by the old background, then use the refine brush to restore or erase the matte by hand where the model got it wrong.
None of these re-runs the model, so the picture updates while you drag. Shrinking the matte a few steps is the usual fix for a light fringe; the brush is what rescues hair, fur and the rim of a glass.
- STEP 05
Export at the size you need
Choose a size preset or keep the original dimensions, pick PNG, WebP or JPG, set any padding, and download. With several images queued, download the whole set as one ZIP.
The export is rendered at full resolution from the original pixels, not from the preview on screen. PNG and WebP keep the alpha channel; JPG has none, so a transparent background lands on white.
More than one
How to change the background on a batch of images
The five steps above are the same for fifty files as for one, with two changes. Drop the whole folder in at the start and it fills the queue rather than replacing what is loaded. Then set the background once: the fill, the size preset and the format apply to every image in the queue, so you are not repeating five steps fifty times.
When the queue has finished, “Download all as ZIP” packs the set into one archive with your filenames preserved. The whole thing is assembled in the tab — the archive is built in memory and handed to your browser’s download, which is why it works with the network off.
One practical note: every image is held at full resolution while it is being worked on, so a hundred 6000 × 4000 files will make a phone struggle where a laptop will not. Nothing is downscaled to make it easier; the queue simply takes longer.
Questions
Before you start
The full FAQ covers privacy, resolution limits and licensing. These are the ones that come up about the steps themselves, and about doing this on a phone.
How do I remove the background from an image?
Open the image in the editor and the background comes off automatically in a second or two — the same five steps apply whether you are starting from a photo, a picture off your phone, or a scanned product shot. Drop the file in, wait for the cutout, then either export a transparent PNG straight away or put a colour, gradient, blur or another image behind the subject first. Nothing uploads: the model runs in this tab, so there is no queue, no account and no cap on how many pictures you put through it.
How do I remove a background online for free?
Use a tool that runs in the browser — the editor on this site opens with nothing to install, nothing to sign up for and nothing to pay. The catch with most free online removers is the export rather than the cutout: you get a full-size preview and then a small or watermarked download unless you buy credits. There is no such step here, because the processing happens on your device rather than on a server somebody has to fund, so every download is the original resolution, however many you do.
How do I remove a background on mobile?
Open this site in your phone’s browser, tap to pick a photo from your camera roll, and the cutout runs on the phone itself — there is no app to install on Android or iOS. The editor lays out as a single scrolling column on small screens, so the queue, the background picker and the export controls stack rather than sitting side by side. Very large photos process more slowly than on a laptop, because the whole image is held in memory instead of being sent somewhere to be worked on, but they are never downscaled to compensate.
How do I remove a background from a photo on iPhone?
An iPhone can do it with no app at all: open the picture in Photos, press and hold on the subject until it lifts, then tap Copy or Share. That is iOS 16 and later, and for a single image it is the quickest route there is. What it does not give you is any control — no way to fix an edge the system got wrong, no choice of output format, nothing to put behind the subject except transparency, and no way to run a folder of photos in one go. This editor covers those: full-resolution PNG, WebP or JPG, colour, gradient, blur or image backgrounds, a refine brush for hair and fur, and a batch queue that comes back as one ZIP. It runs in Safari on the same phone, and either way the photo stays on the device.
How long does it take?
The first visit spends a few seconds fetching the model. After that a cutout is typically one to three seconds on a laptop, longer for a very large file on a phone, and there is no upload or download round trip on either end.
Do I need an account?
No. There is no sign-up, no email step and no trial. Nothing about the tool is metered, because nothing runs on a server that would need paying for.
What if the cutout is wrong?
Switch to the Quality model first — it is markedly better on hair and low-contrast edges. If it still misses, the refine brush paints the matte back in or carves it out at pixel level, and “Reset matte to automatic” undoes all of it in one click.
Related
Where to go next
- Change an image background colour — the swatches, the hex field, and the exact white Amazon, eBay, Shopify and Etsy ask for.
- A free alternative to remove.bg — what changes when it shuts down, and how the limits compare against Canva.
- How on-device processing works — the actual network requests, and why there are none after the model loads.
Drop an image. Keep the pixels.
No account, no credits, no downscaled preview. Just the file you meant to make.