About ImgCutout

ImgCutout is a free background remover that runs entirely in your web browser. You drop in a photo, an AI model running on your own computer or phone separates the subject from the background, and you download a transparent PNG, or a JPG or WEBP on a color of your choice. No account, no watermark, and no upload.

Who runs ImgCutout

ImgCutout is an independent project designed, built, and maintained by a solo web developer. Every guide on the site is written by the same person, after running the tool on the photos and settings the guide describes. It is not part of a larger company, there are no investors, and nobody else has access to the code or the infrastructure. The first public version went online in September 2026, and every change since then is listed in the changelog.

You can reach the person behind the site directly at contact@imgcutout.com or through the contact page. Bug reports, feature requests, and corrections to the guides are read and answered personally.

Why we built it

Removing a background is one of the most common image edits there is. Online sellers need white product shots, job seekers need a clean headshot, designers need logos without a white box, and parents need a passport photo that will not be rejected. Yet most online background removers work the same way: you upload your photo to a company's server, it is processed there, and you get back a low-resolution preview unless you pay for credits or a subscription.

That model has two problems. The first is privacy. The photos people cut out are often personal: faces, children, homes, ID documents, unreleased products. Once a photo is uploaded, you are trusting someone else's retention policy and security. The second is cost. Server-side AI is expensive to run, so the free tier is usually limited.

Modern browsers changed the math. WebAssembly and WebGPU let a compact segmentation model run at useful speed on an ordinary laptop or phone. If the model runs on your device, there is nothing to upload, no server bill per image, and no reason to sell higher resolution as an upgrade. ImgCutout exists to show that a background remover can be private, free, and full quality at the same time.

How the technology works

When you first use the tool, your browser downloads an open-source background-removal model called ormbg (the default 8-bit version is about 28MB) and caches it. The model is run by Transformers.js on top of ONNX Runtime Web, using WebAssembly on your CPU by default, or WebGPU if you enable it in Settings and your browser supports it.

For each image, the model predicts how likely each pixel is to belong to the foreground. That prediction becomes an alpha mask, which is cleaned up, optionally tightened or widened with the edge slider, and applied to your original pixels at full resolution (on phones and low-memory devices, photos above about 4 megapixels are scaled down first so the browser does not run out of memory). Portrait retouching uses Google's MediaPipe face landmark and selfie segmentation models, which also run locally. Both tools run the model in a Web Worker so the page stays responsive, and the bulk tool can work through up to 100 images in a row.

The longer explanation is in How on-device background removal works, and How to check that your images are never uploaded shows you how to confirm the privacy claim yourself with your browser's developer tools.

Open-source software and licenses

ImgCutout stands on the work of open-source projects. We are grateful to their authors.

Example photos on the site come from Pexels and are credited next to each image. The cutouts shown beside them are the tool's unedited output, and the exact settings used to make them are listed under every example gallery.

What we will not do

• Upload, store, or look at your images.
• Add watermarks, lower the resolution of free downloads, or hide features behind sign-ups.
• Sell lists of email addresses from the contact form or use them for marketing.
• Make claims about the tool we cannot back up. If something does not work well, such as group photos or very fine transparent objects, the guides say so.

How the site is funded

Running ImgCutout costs money for the domain, hosting, file storage for the model, and email delivery. The site is funded by advertising served through Google AdSense. Ads are placed in articles and below explanatory content, never inside the tool area, over the image preview, or near the download buttons. How advertising cookies work and how to control them is explained in the Privacy Policy.

How the guides are written

The guides are written by the same person who builds the tool, based on running the tool on real photos and on the published requirements of the platforms they discuss, such as marketplace image rules and passport photo standards. Platform rules change, so every guide that cites outside requirements links to the official source and shows the date it was last checked. If you find something out of date or wrong, please tell us and we will fix it.