Transparent Background Maker

With By colour, the tool takes the most common colour along the image border as the background colour (the "key"), on the assumption that the border is background. Press Pick and click the image to choose a different spot; a 3 by 3 pixel area is averaged so JPEG noise does not decide the colour.

Each pixel is compared with the key using a colour distance weighted for how the eye sees red, green and blue, on a scale where black to white is 100. Pixels within the Tolerance (default 12) become fully transparent. Pixels slightly further away, within the Edge softness band (default 8), become partly transparent, which keeps edges smooth instead of jagged. Pixels right at the edge of the subject that blend its colour with the background are also made partly transparent, in proportion to how much background they contain, so anti-aliased outlines do not leave a halo. Setting Edge softness to 0 turns both off and gives hard edges, which suits pixel art.

By default only background that touches the image edge is removed: the tool starts at the border and spreads inwards through matching pixels, so the same colour inside the subject is kept. Tick Also remove enclosed areas to remove every matching pixel, for example the inside of a letter "O" in a logo. Remove the background colour from soft edges subtracts the old background from partly transparent edge pixels, so a cut-out does not keep a white or green outline.

The preview updates as you move the sliders, so you can see straight away what is removed. Zoom in on thin parts of the subject before downloading.

• Logos and icons exported on a white or single-colour background.
• Product photos on a plain white paper or sweep backdrop.
• Scanned signatures on paper, so they can be placed on documents.

For photos of people, pets or objects on a real-world background, switch to Detect subject, which uses a segmentation model instead of colour (the same one as the AI Background Remover).

Smooth edges in an image are made of pixels that blend the subject colour with the background colour. The Edge softness band makes those pixels partly transparent instead of keeping or removing them completely, and the edge clean-up option takes the old background colour out of them, so a logo cut from white does not keep a light outline when placed on a dark page. If an outline remains, raise the Tolerance a little; set Edge softness to 0 for pixel art or other hard-edged graphics.

Download as PNG, which stores transparency without loss, or WebP, which is smaller and also keeps transparency. JPG is not offered because it cannot store transparency.

Everything happens in your browser and nothing is uploaded. By colour needs no download; Detect subject downloads the model files on first use.