How to Remove a Background From Any Photo for Free (No Photoshop)

Originally published on Tutomod.

Product photos on clean backgrounds, profile pictures without the messy room: it used to be a professional's job, now it's a ten second one.

Updated August 09, 2026, after a fresh review, with updated visuals and links.

Here are the free tools that do it properly, plus the tricks for the edge cases where hair and glass confuse the robots.

Get this ready first

Any photo
A browser (all tools below are free and online)

Photo by George Milton on Pexels

The how to part

1. The fastest: remove.bg

Go to remove.bg, upload, wait five seconds, download. The free tier gives preview size which is plenty for avatars, listings and thumbnails. It handles hair edges better than anything else free.

2. The designer's way: Canva's one click

In Canva, put your image on a design, click Edit image, BG Remover (Pro feature) or use the free background remover website from Canva separately. Great when the photo continues straight into a design anyway.

3. The offline friendly way: PhotoRoom or GIMP

PhotoRoom's free tier on phone does one tap removal and instant product backgrounds. GIMP, the free Photoshop alternative, has fuzzy select plus refine edge for full manual control when you're old school.

E-commerce shots: PhotoRoom adds shadows automatically
GIMP path: select by color, grow by 1, feather by 1

4. Tricky subjects: hair, fur, glass

Shoot on any busy background, then run remove.bg and inspect at 100%. If edges look eaten, try PhotoRoom's cutout mode, whose hair handling differs, sometimes dramatically better on pets.

5. Put something better behind it

Transparent PNG is step one. White keeps listings clean, soft gradients look professional for socials, and Canva drops you straight into both with one click after the cutout.

Photo by Alexey Demidov on Pexels

Tips that actually help

Sharp, well lit originals cut out 100 times better than dim ones: light before software.
Export as PNG, not JPG: JPG has no transparency and will fill your background white anyway.
Batch product photos? PhotoRoom and remove.bg both sell bulk tiers that pay off above twenty items a month.