Make a solid background transparent

How it works

• For each pixel, the tool measures how far its color is from the background color (0–100%) and makes colors within the tolerance transparent.
• Area to remove
  • Connected to the edge (default): removes colors close to the background only where they can be traced from the image edge, moving up, down, left or right. White inside the design, or any area not connected to the outside, is kept.
  • Same color everywhere: removes every color close to the background color, wherever it is.
• Edges
  • Smooth (default): pixels within 2 pixels of the removed area become partly transparent according to how much of the background color is mixed with the nearby design color, and the background color is taken out. This removes the white fringe around designs drawn on white. Sharp edges and pixels further inside are not changed.
  • Sharp: only colors within the tolerance are removed; all other pixels stay as they are.

Tips

• JPEG compression leaves blotches in the background. If they remain, raise the tolerance a little. Set it too high and parts of the design close to the background color disappear too.
• The “Removed area” view shows what becomes transparent (stripes) and which edges become partly transparent (yellow).
• A black backdrop makes it easier to spot any remaining white fringe.

What it cannot do

• It does not detect people or objects (it is not AI background removal). It is not suited to photos without a single-color background.
• Parts of the design that have the background color and touch the outside are removed too.
• It saves PNG files with transparency only.

Limits

• Images up to 50 MB and 50,000,000 pixels can be loaded.
• Processing is limited to 16,777,216 pixels (about 4,096 × 4,096). Scaling down would lower the resolution of the saved image, so larger images are not scaled; the tool tells you instead.