Have you ever wished you could take that great photo of yourself and change the surroundings? Removing people or unsightly background items from your favorite pictures could be very useful, for example. Many folks think you need an expensive tool like Photoshop to make this happen. The good news is, there are several free/low-cost tools that can be used for this purpose. You may even already have access to some of them without knowing it! Today we are going to focus on a tool that can be used in any modern browser without creating an account or downloading software: remove.bg.
The interface couldn’t be simpler. To upload your image, you can drag and drop an image, search your computer files for an image, or copy/paste an image or image URL.
When your image is uploaded, the program gets to work removing what it thinks is the background. This car image was spot on.
When I used a more complicated image, the remove.bg took off the falling snow that I wanted to keep above the cat’s head.
Notice the edit button in the top right of the image with the background removed. Clicking that leads to options for setting a new background or editing how much background is removed.
Click the erase/restore tab in the upper-right to get a resizable “brush” to remove more background or restore something that the tool took out. In this case, I restored some snow with a wide brush here. I can go back and erase with a smaller brush to cut a finer line around the snow.
I went back to the background tab and chose a dramatically different color for the new background, but I could have downloaded the image without adding another background if I wanted to use it in another image editor. Or I can download this version with the new background:
The Fine Print
Anytime a tool is free, we should be skeptical about what we are agreeing to in exchange for the service. If you are concerned about your privacy, you can check out their privacy policy, but I didn’t see anything there that I was concerned about. In this case, remove.bg is free for low resolution (up to .25 megapixels or around 625px x 400px) images. If you want your downloads to be at a higher resolution, you will need credits. One (credit) per month is allowed on the free plan. Credits can be used in the downloadable version of remove.bg.
If you need to work with larger images more often you can go with a paid plan. Plans are available as subscriptions (credits per month) or pay as you go (credits to be used within two years of purchase). More about credits on their website.
Conclusion
Remove.bg is a great free browser tool for removing image backgrounds. Have you used remove.bg? If so, let us know in the comments. Stay tuned to this blog for more tools to remove image backgrounds and other Tech Tips.