Remove a white background

Why white is the hardest background to remove well

A white background looks like the easiest case, and for the simplest tools it is: select every white pixel, delete it. The trouble is that white is rarely only in the background. A white shirt collar, the label on a bottle, the highlight on a glossy product, a white cat on a white sofa, the paper inside the loop of a handwritten letter: a tool that removes a colour removes all of those too, and leaves holes in the subject.

getPNG does not remove a colour. An AI model finds the subject by its shape and context, and everything outside it becomes transparent, whatever colour it was. The white inside the subject stays, because the model sees it as part of the subject. The edge is then fitted to the real pixels of your full-size image, so the outline follows the product rather than a blurry mask.

How to remove a white background

1. Drop the image on this page: JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, GIF, BMP or an iPhone HEIC.
2. Look at the cutout on a dark colour. In the Background panel, pick Black. A white fringe is invisible on the checkerboard and obvious on black.
3. Pull the edge in if you see a rim. Move Edge shift to minus one or minus two pixels. The change is instant because the model does not run again.
4. Switch back to Transparent and download the PNG. It has the same width and height as the original.

The white halo, and why it happens

Pixels along an edge are never purely subject or purely background. A camera sensor and any resizing blend the two, so the last pixel of a dark jacket on a white wall is a lighter mix of both. Keep that pixel fully opaque and it shows as a pale line when the cutout lands on something dark. Shrinking the outline by a pixel removes the mixed row; Feather softens what is left so it does not look cut with scissors. White halos and jagged edges after a cutout covers the same fix in Photoshop, GIMP and Photopea, for the cases where one pixel is not enough.

Logos, signatures and scans on white paper

Flat artwork is a different job from a photo. A logo on a white page has closed shapes, and the white inside an O, an A or a ring belongs to the background even though the model may read it as part of the subject. Check those holes in the compare view. For a logo with many enclosed shapes, or a signature with thin strokes, a trace does better: a signature to a transparent PNG on getSVG, the sibling tool, removes the paper colour everywhere it appears and gives you a vector as well. A logo photographed on paper, a wall or a shirt walks through both routes.

If you already work in an editor, GIMP's Color to Alpha removes white across the whole image, holes included, and is the right tool for a scan of black ink on white. It also makes every white pixel in the subject see-through, which is the trade-off. Removing a background in GIMP shows both methods.

Keeping it transparent after you download it

Save as PNG or WebP, not JPG: a JPG has no transparency and puts a solid colour back. If the PNG looks white again in the place you put it, the problem is usually the viewer or an app that converted it, not the file. Why a PNG shows a black or white background lists the usual suspects.

The image is processed in your browser and is never uploaded, which is worth knowing for unreleased product shots and for scans of signed documents.