Local Windows utility

Background Remover

Drop in an image and get the subject back on a transparent background. Do one, or do fifty. Keep the transparency, fill it with a colour, or drop a different photo in behind — and check the first result before you commit the rest. It all happens on your own PC, which is why there is no credit counter and no sign-up.

Download for Windows

Windows 10/11 (x64) · Free · No account

Cutouts land in the Background Remover folder as {name}-nobg.png — your originals are untouched.

Abstract illustration: a bright pane of glass lifted clear of the darker slab behind it, that slab dissolving into particles along its edge, suggesting a subject cut out of its background.

What it's for

Real jobs — Background Remover

Not feature bullets — the actual situations people open this for.

A product shot that needs a clean transparent background for a store listing.
Cutting yourself out of a photo for a profile picture or an avatar.
A batch of team headshots that all need the same brand-coloured backdrop.
Lifting a logo off the flat background it was saved on.
A subject for a thumbnail, a slide or a poster, with the original scene dropped.

What it does

Everything Background Remover handles

Everything below runs on your own machine, on as many files as you give it.

Real transparency, every time

The subject is separated from what is behind it and written to a PNG with a genuine alpha channel — not a white rectangle that looks transparent until you place it on anything.

Or replace the background

Pick a solid colour from the swatch, type a hex value, or choose another image and PhotoTray composites the subject onto it. Same run, same output folder.

Preview before the batch

Run the first image at reduced size and see the before and after side by side. Fifty images is a long time to find out the colour was wrong.

One image or a folder

Every image becomes its own job in the queue, sharing one batch. No per-file wait, no upload, and no cap on how many you hand it.

The model is in the installer

ISNet ships inside the engine package, so there is nothing to download, nothing to sign in to, and no first-run gate. It works on a machine that has never been online.

It can be a rule

Make it a Watch Folders rule and every product photo that lands in a folder comes out as a cutout, without you opening the app.

How it works

From drop to done

1
Drop in your images
PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, TIFF, AVIF or BMP — one, or a whole selection. Thumbnails appear so you can drop any you did not mean to include.
2
Choose what goes behind
Transparent, a solid colour, or a replacement image. An invalid hex value is flagged and blocks the run rather than quietly producing fifty white cutouts.
3
Preview the first one
Optional, and worth the few seconds. You see the actual cutout against your actual background choice before anything is queued.
4
Cut them out
Each image becomes its own job. Finished files land in your Background Remover folder, named after the original with -nobg on the end.

Under the hood

The engines, named

The model, the compositor, and where both run.

Segmentation model: ISNet, via @imgly/background-removal-node on onnxruntime — CPU
Model delivery: bundled inside the engine package — nothing is downloaded
Compositing: sharp (libvips) — colour fill and image replacement
Input: PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF, TIFF, AVIF, BMP
Output: PNG — always, so transparency survives
Platform: Windows 10/11 (x64) — nothing is uploaded to be cut out

The honest limit is the model, and it is the same limit the popular web tools have: it is good on a clear subject with reasonable contrast, and less good on fine hair and on subjects that blend into what is behind them. That is why the preview exists and why it runs on the first image rather than after the batch. Output is always a PNG, even when you have filled the background with an opaque colour — the alternative is a format that cannot hold the transparency the tool exists to produce.

The rest of the belt