Background Remover

Choose a photo, press Start, and the subject is separated from its background by an image-segmentation neural network (IS-Net) that runs inside your browser. The result is a PNG with a transparent background, shown next to the original over a checkerboard so you can judge the edges. If you need a plain backdrop instead, pick white, black or any colour before downloading and it is composited in for you. Typical uses: product photos for a marketplace listing, a profile picture or ID-style portrait on a clean background, cutouts for a slide or poster, and logos or stickers that need transparency.

The first time you press Start, the tool downloads about 40 MB of model and runtime files once. They are cached by your browser, so later images process without any further download. The download comes from the CDN of IMG.LY, the company that publishes the open model; if you are on mobile data you may prefer to wait for Wi-Fi. Nothing is fetched when you merely open the page or pick an image; the download begins only when you press the button.

Privacy works the opposite way from most online background removers: instead of your picture being sent to a server, the model is brought to you. Your image never leaves the browser, is not uploaded anywhere and is not stored. That also means processing speed depends on your device. A recent laptop finishes a photo in a few seconds; an older phone can take much longer and may run out of memory on large images, which is why files are capped at 20 MB (inference needs far more memory than the file itself). The model runs on the CPU through WebAssembly, so a browser without WebAssembly support cannot use this tool.

Results are very good on clearly defined subjects such as people, products, animals and vehicles. Fine detail like flyaway hair, fur, glass, smoke or thin fences is where any automatic tool struggles, and the compact model used here may leave a soft halo in those spots. If the edge matters, run a high-resolution original and check it against a dark background colour before you export. Output is always PNG so transparency is preserved; convert it with the image compressor if you need a smaller JPEG on a solid background.