How to remove a white background from an image

A white background is the most common one to remove, and the easiest to get slightly wrong. Clip art, icons, scanned documents and product photos shot on a white sweep all have one, and each has its own trap: grey rims around edges, holes in white parts, or a product that loses its shadow and looks pasted on. The right method depends on what is on the white.

Which mode to use

What is on the white	Mode	Why
Logo, icon, clip art, text	Flat colour	Flat artwork separates cleanly by colour
Scanned signature or stamp	Flat colour	Removes the paper and faint ruled lines
Coloured product on a clean white sweep	Flat colour, then compare with Best edges	Both usually work; Flat colour keeps thin details
White or pale product on white	Best edges	There is too little colour difference to key
Glass, clear plastic, liquids	Best edges	See-through areas need a model and a manual check
Person or animal on a white wall	Best edges	Hair and fur need a model
Uneven white, such as a wall with shadows	Best edges	Flat colour will say the background is not flat

Remove the white

1. Open Remove Image Background.
2. Choose Flat colour, for logos and signatures or Best edges from the table above.
3. Drop, paste or choose the image. Up to 20 can go in at once; they start as soon as they arrive.
4. Leave the background on Transparent, choose PNG on the Size tab, and download.

Flat colour works by measuring how far each pixel is from the white it finds around the edge of the image. Pixels well away from it are kept; pixels close to it are removed; pixels in between, which is where anti-aliased edges are, become partly transparent, with the white taken back out of their colour. That last step is what stops the familiar grey or white rim when the image is later placed on a dark background.

If the white is not even, for example a sweep that falls off to grey at the corners, Flat colour reports that the background is not one flat colour instead of guessing. Best edges is the answer for those photos. When Best edges finishes an image that does have a flat white background, the result says Flat colour may cut it cleaner, so it is easy to compare the two.

Check the edges on dark

Set the background to a dark colour on the Background tab and zoom in:

• A light rim means some white survived along the edge. On the Edges tab, Smooth and Feather soften it, and Erase removes it where it is thick.
• Holes inside the subject happen where the subject contains the same white as the background, such as a white label on a bottle. With Flat colour, paint them back with Restore, or use Best edges, which usually keeps a shape that is part of the object.
• Broken thin lines happen when a thin line is light grey and falls on the white side of the split. Start from a larger or darker source if you can.

Switch back to Transparent before downloading.

Shadows: remove, then add them back consistently

A product shot on white usually has a soft shadow underneath it. Flat colour treats that shadow as background, because it is only a little darker than the white. That is often what you want for a catalogue, where shadows photographed on different days never match. The Background tab has a Subject shadow control that adds a consistent shadow with a set offset, blur and strength once the product is on a new background, and Use these settings for every image applies it across a whole batch.

If the original shadow matters, use Best edges, which tends to cut the shadow away as well, and add it back the same way.

Put it back on white, properly

Many marketplaces want the main product image on pure white, and a photo that looks white is often a slightly grey or warm off-white. Removing the background and placing the product on pure white fixes that. On the Size tab, the presets such as Amazon main image, Flipkart, Meesho and eBay set a pure white background, a square canvas and a fill that places the product with an even margin. They are common settings, so check the marketplace’s current rules before uploading.

Make the file smaller

Transparent PNGs of photographs can be large. Save as WebP on the Size tab for a much smaller file that still keeps transparency, if the destination accepts WebP. For logos and icons, Compress Image reduces a PNG to a 256-colour palette with transparency, which usually shrinks flat artwork a lot without a visible change.

Where the work happens

The image is processed inside your browser. Flat colour needs no download at all, and Best edges downloads its model once from FileGizmo and keeps it on your device. The result page lists any other site the page contacted after you added the image, which you can confirm in the browser’s Network panel.