/ nobg.lol

Remove the background from a photo

Drop in a photo and get the subject cut out, as a see-through PNG or on a solid color. The AI runs on your device, so your picture is never uploaded.

Remove a background

How your photos stay private

  • No uploadThe AI model runs inside this tab. Your browser reads the photo from your disk, cuts it out in memory and saves the result back to your disk.
  • Locked to this siteThe page's security policy only lets it fetch files from nobg.lol itself, which is how it gets the AI model. There's no server code here to receive a photo.
  • The old background is wipedPixels that end up fully see-through are blanked in the file, so the background can't be brought back by switching transparency off. Only the soft edge right around the subject keeps its colors. No location or camera details are saved.
  • No analytics or cookiesNo tracking scripts, no ads, no account. Our host, Cloudflare, keeps standard logs of page visits, like it does for every site. Your photos aren't in them.

The code is open source. Read every line on GitHub. The cutting is done by IMG.LY's background-removal library (AGPL-3.0) and the IS-Net model, both served from this domain.

Questions

Why does the first photo take a while?

The first time, your browser downloads the AI model, about 96 MB. On a phone, use Wi-Fi. Your browser usually keeps a copy, so next time it starts much faster. After that, a photo takes a few seconds on a laptop and longer on a phone. If the subject runs off the edge of the photo, the AI takes a second look to keep that part solid, which doubles the time.

What kind of photo works best?

One clear subject, like a person, a pet or a product, that stands out from what's behind it. Fine hair, glass, smoke, busy scenes with lots of objects, and subjects the same color as the background can come out rough or partly see-through. There's no brush here to touch up the result, so check the preview before you use it.

Can it open iPhone HEIC photos?

Not directly. Turn them into JPGs with heic.lol first (it's in the list of tools below). It also works in your browser with no upload. Then drop the JPG here.

PNG or JPG?

For a see-through background you need PNG, which works in slides, design apps and most websites. On a solid color, JPG is much smaller and opens anywhere, and PNG keeps every pixel exact.

Is there a size limit?

No daily limit and no watermark. Photos over 16 megapixels are scaled down to 16 so phone browsers can cope. The AI looks at a 1024 by 1024 copy of your photo and scales its cutout back up, so on very large photos the edges can look a little soft.

Who made the AI, and is the code really open?

The model is IS-Net, from the DIS research project (Apache-2.0). It runs through IMG.LY's background-removal library (AGPL-3.0) and Microsoft's ONNX Runtime (MIT). All of nobg.lol's code is on GitHub, including the small changes we made to the library so it never talks to IMG.LY's servers. See the credits page.

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