QuickCut

Make a picture’s background transparent

Turn any photo into a PNG with a see-through background, ready to drop onto a slide, a website, a T-shirt mock-up or a sticker sheet.

No photo handy? Try one:

Runs in your browser. Your photos are never uploaded to a server.

What you’re actually downloading

A transparent image is an ordinary picture with an extra channel, called alpha, that stores how opaque each pixel is. The checkerboard you see is just the convention editors use to show “nothing here”.

The important pixels are the in-between ones along the edge. A good cutout keeps them partly transparent so the new background blends through the hair or the soft shadow of a sleeve, instead of leaving a hard sticker outline.

Getting a clean edge

  • Hard objects (bottles, phones, furniture): lower Softness to about 20 for a crisp outline.
  • Hair and fur: keep Softness at 60 or higher and use the “People, fast” model for portraits.
  • A pale fringe from the old background: move Shrink/grow to about −10.

Why a cutout needs “half-transparent” pixels

Zoom into the edge of a hair strand and each pixel is only partly hair. The PNG stores that as alpha (0–100%), and whatever you put behind it shows through by exactly that amount.

New background

50% × hair + 50% × navy = rgb(100,75,73)

This is the “over” operator from Porter and Duff’s 1984 paper Compositing Digital Images, still how every editor, browser and game engine layers images.

Where transparent PNGs are accepted

WhereTransparency kept?
Canva, Figma, Photoshop, Keynote, PowerPoint, Google SlidesYes (PNG and WebP)
Websites, Shopify and WooCommerce product imagesYes, though marketplaces often require white
Print-on-demand (T-shirts, stickers, mugs)Yes, PNG is the standard upload format
WhatsApp, iMessage and email previewsUsually shown on white or black
JPG export anywhereNo, transparent areas become a solid colour

Questions people ask

How do I make the background of a picture transparent?

Drop the picture on the amber sheet above. The AI removes the background and shows your subject on a checkerboard, which is how editors display transparency. Keep “Transparent” selected and download as PNG or WebP.

Why is my transparent PNG showing a white or black background?

The file is fine; the app you opened it in is drawing a background behind it. Windows Photos and many chat apps show white or black. Place the PNG in a design app, document or web page and the transparency appears.

Can a JPG have a transparent background?

No. The JPG format has no alpha channel, so any transparent area is filled with a solid colour when saved. Use PNG for maximum compatibility or WebP for smaller files on the web.

Why does the checkerboard show through parts of my subject?

The model thought those parts were background, often with glass, very pale clothing against a pale wall, or motion blur. Use the Restore brush to paint them back, or lower Softness and press Grow slightly.

Is a transparent PNG bigger than the original JPG?

Usually, yes, often 2–5× larger, because PNG compression is lossless. Choose WebP if file size matters: it keeps transparency and is typically much smaller.

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