Background removal · Quality proof

Hard photos, run through the remover

Anyone can promise clean cutouts. This page shows them. On 9 November 2026 we ran six hard photos through the same background remover this site offers you, and published what came out, unedited: the photo, the cutout on a checkerboard so its edges can be judged, and a crop at 100%, where one pixel on the screen is one pixel of the photo. Four cases held up. Two visibly struggled, and they are on this page too, labelled as what they are.

How long a cut takes, measured

These are the times the tool itself printed during the runs above, on our test computer: a desktop-class machine with four processor cores, in Chrome, with the removal program already downloaded. Each photo ran twice; the time printed is the second, warm run.

One photo at three sizes says the rest: the market portrait at 0.70 megapixels took 9.8 s, at 2.48 megapixels 9.7 s, and at 5.57 megapixels 10.3 s. Size barely moves the time, because the program reads every photo at one working size (1024 x 1024) and spends its time there; only the final full-size write-out grows with the photo. So this page prints seconds per photo, not a per-megapixel figure the measurements do not support.

The first photo of a session costs more: starting the program measured 2.6 s, and the day's first cut ran 11.6 s before later cuts settled at about 10 s. On a first-ever visit, add the one-time 44.3 MB program download. Your own device will differ, faster or slower. No phone time is printed anywhere on this page: we have never measured one, and a guessed figure would be a claim, not a measurement.

White on white

A white egg on a white table against a white background. The only thing separating the egg from its surroundings is a soft shadow.

1024 x 683 · 0.70 megapixels · warm cut 10.6 s on the test computer

Held. The shell’s edge is followed all the way round. One flaw, and the crop below is framed to show it: a faint spray of half-clear specks floats just left of the egg, where the pale background and the shadow nearly match the shell.

Photo: “White chicken egg” by Ren West, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The cutout file itself, exactly as the tool produced it: download the PNG.

Fine hair

A portrait with a head of fine, flyaway curls, photographed against a patterned chair and a warm wall.

1280 x 1918 · 2.46 megapixels · warm cut 9.7 s on the test computer

Held. The crop is the story: single curls and loose strands are followed one by one, with the background taken out from between them. Two honest marks against it: a strip of her chair came along at the bottom edge, and the loosest strands at the top keep a hint of the warm wall behind them.

Photo: “Smiling senior woman with curly hair portrait” by Shixart1985, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The cutout file itself, exactly as the tool produced it: download the PNG.

A busy background

A street-market portrait: stacks of bananas, hanging cloth, tarpaulins, and a second person in red standing directly behind her.

1920 x 1290 · 2.48 megapixels · warm cut 9.7 s on the test computer

Held, with a judgement call you should see. The market clutter is gone and the hairline against it is clean, down to single grey hairs in the crop. But the woman in red was kept too: this program removes backgrounds, it does not choose between two people. A sliver of the banana stack at the frame’s left edge came along as well.

Photo: “Wayuu woman with sad face in the market buying” by Wilfredor, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. The cutout file itself, exactly as the tool produced it: download the PNG.

Glass

A glass of iced water on a wooden table, with a laptop beside it: a subject you can see through, next to a solid one.

1920 x 1282 · 2.46 megapixels · warm cut 10.2 s on the test computer

Mixed. The laptop is gone completely, and the rim of the glass and the water’s surface are solid. Below the rim, the clear walls of the glass fade to half strength, and a piece of the table under the glass came along at half strength with them. Judge it in the crop: the rim is a clean cut, the wall of the glass is not.

Photo: “A clear glass of water sits next to a laptop” by Shixart1985, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The cutout file itself, exactly as the tool produced it: download the PNG.

Chrome

A motorcycle engine at close range: polished chrome and black fins, with the sky and the ground reflected in every curve.

1024 x 695 · 0.71 megapixels · warm cut 9.9 s on the test computer

The limit case on this page. The dark parts and the exhaust pipe are solid, but much of the bright chrome came out half see-through: the checkerboard shows through the engine. Metal that mirrors its surroundings reads to the program as partly background. This result is shown unedited on purpose: it is the honest edge of what this tool can do today.

Photo: “Motorcycle engine”, CC0, via rawpixel. The cutout file itself, exactly as the tool produced it: download the PNG.

The test picture

Not a photograph: the drawn picture this project uses to grade the remover, a fan of fine strands over a figure. It is the picture behind the bench figures quoted elsewhere on this site (95.9% of its strand points kept, no background point kept).

1200 x 900 · 1.08 megapixels · warm cut 9.8 s on the test computer

Held. The strand fan survives, thinning toward its edges, as it did in the bench runs. It is here so the measured claim and the photographs can be checked against each other, not as a substitute for them.

Picture: drawn by this project’s test-corpus generator, 7 November 2026. Synthetic, and labelled that way wherever it appears. The cutout file itself, exactly as the tool produced it: download the PNG.