Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
IT Technology

Remove.bg is a Website That Removes Backgrounds from Portraits in Seconds (petapixel.com) 107

Posted by msmash from the pro-tip dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: If you often find yourself needing to remove the backgrounds from photos but don't have the time to manually do it, you might want to bookmark Remove.bg. It's a simple free website that automatically removes the backgrounds from photos in just 5 seconds with a single click.

Simply use the button on the homepage to select a photo from your computer (or you can also enter a photo's URL on the Web). The website then processes the photo and shows the result in moments. Under the result is a button that lets you download it as a PNG image with a transparent background.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Remove.bg is a Website That Removes Backgrounds from Portraits in Seconds More

Remove.bg is a Website That Removes Backgrounds from Portraits in Seconds

Comments Filter:
  • ... although this is much much faster.

  • Not 100% accurate (Score:5, Informative)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @04:53PM (#57826694)
    I tried it, and it's not perfect at distinguishing foreground from background, so the picture of myself I gave it came back with a huge black lump on the side of my faces that should have been part of the background. Of course, I could clean up that minor imperfection in photoshop.

  • Where was this 20 years ago? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by unfortunateson ( 527551 ) on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @04:55PM (#57826706) Journal

    20 years ago, my wife and I ran an independent online children's bookstore. Our catalog/shopping cart was, to a large degree, hand-built by me (yay Perl and FoxPro), and the product images (only for monthly features) were scanned from publisher paper catalogs. It was ridiculous levels of effort to clean those images up (especially with Photoshop Elements, we couldn't afford more than that).

    It was the best of times (a search on Yahoo or AltaVista had as much a chance of finding us as Amazon when you searched for a title), it was the worst of times (not enough volume to get discounts on rapidly-rising credit card and shipping fees). We got out with a small profit... but I would have loved to have had today's image tools.

    • Now that we have AI enabled image editing software all things are possible.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Quirkz ( 1206400 )

      I hear you. I've trimmed enough backgrounds out of things over the years. Though I think it was in part my first attempt with Photoshop, cleaning up an image of Beavis and Butthead pulled from some MTv ad to put it in the college newspaper, that was one of my first awestruck moments where I realized "wow, I can do amazing things with computer graphics!" It's a skill that has served me well for decades.

    • I wrote software like this 20 years ago. When I wasn't busy writing website functionality in Perl :)

      My software operated so slowly that you could sit and watch it work. It looked like someone was using a pen to draw over all of the background. You'd click anywhere on the background and it took off like a Roomba, drawing white until it detected the edge of an object.

      It would often get halfway done, then get to the one spot where the border between the foreground and background wasn't readily distinguishable

  • Why is this Slashdot worthy?/Privacy concerns? (Score:3)

    by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @04:58PM (#57826722) Homepage

    I'm curious because I would think that the majority of people that come to this site can probably remove backgrounds it themselves with photoshop/Paint.net/Gimp/Krita/etc. I guess it's less work but I would think that most people here would pride themselves on being able to do it themselves.

    Secondly, I don't see any privacy/ownership statements on this - couldn't this be a way for the owners of the site to collect personal pictures or even gain access to a user's computer?

    Hopefully I won't get slammed like my last post.

    • Technology is awesome. Instead of spending 40 minutes cleaning up a photo, you can spend 40 minutes developing the product page. So much more gets done.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Made by kaleido.ai

      A Note on Privacy

      Your images are uploaded through a secure SSL/TLS-encrypted connection. We process them, and temporarily store the results so you can download them. After that (about an hour later) we delete your files. We do not share your images or use them for any other purpose than removing the background and letting you download the result.

      It's right there on the website

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Because no one ever lies on the internet.

        /s

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by KlomDark ( 6370 )

        Right up there with "I promise not to cum in your mouth"

    • Re:Why is this Slashdot worthy?/Privacy concerns? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Archfeld ( 6757 ) <treboreel@live.com> on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @05:09PM (#57826776) Journal

      A Note on Privacy :
      Your images are uploaded through a secure SSL/TLS-encrypted connection. We process them, and temporarily store the results so you can download them. After that (about an hour later) we delete your files. We do not share your images or use them for any other purpose than removing the background and letting you download the result.

      https://www.remove.bg/about [remove.bg]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by g01d4 ( 888748 )
        Also from the about page it looks like they're trying to get you to sign up for an email list in the likely event they come out with a commercial product (better output resolution, version updates, access to an api &c).

    • but I would think that most people here would pride themselves on being able to do it themselves.

      I can make my own pizza but they're cheap enough I usually order one instead. Just because I can do "task A" doesn't mean it's always worth my while to do it. Sometimes having the convenience of something done for me is a good thing.

      Now, that said, I don't trust that my photos on a site like this will be kept private or that they wouldn't be mining my data some other way.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

        If all you're doing is producing meme-worthy mashups from existing photos online, who cares if they mine them?

      • Just because I can do "task A" doesn't mean it's always worth my while to do it.

        Agreed, I am busy rebuilding a classic motorcycle (a Honda CX500TC) but to do a full service on my car I take it to a mechanic, I'm rebuilding the bike myself because I enjoy doing it. I can also mow lawn and prune trees etc. etc. but I pay someone else to do it, because I earn more money in an hour doing what I do best. Ok, maybe not the pruning, most people tend to fuck it up, and it takes a season or two for the poor tree

    • Re:Why is this Slashdot worthy?/Privacy concerns? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @05:33PM (#57826960)

      I'm curious because I would think that the majority of people that come to this site can probably remove backgrounds it themselves with photoshop/Paint.net/Gimp/Krita/etc. I guess it's less work but I would think that most people here would pride themselves on being able to do it themselves.

      Secondly, I don't see any privacy/ownership statements on this - couldn't this be a way for the owners of the site to collect personal pictures or even gain access to a user's computer?

      Hopefully I won't get slammed like my last post.

      I don't find it Slashdot-worthy. It's more like a random posting on Reddit fishing for bored upvotes "Hey look at this cool site."

      Okay.

    • I was also thinking, where's the source code, or at least some description of the algorithm. This is a tech site, for hug's sake. I imagine it's yet another application of machine learning where nobody really knows how it actually works.

    • Modern tools are pretty good at isolating high contrast areas but I'm not aware of any quick select/matte refinement tools that handles fine hair or semi transparent stuff well. It's typically a whole lot of manual work...

      I did a quick test with a random "fine hair" image from Google Images was surprised with how well it handled it [imgur.com]. While it had problems with other areas of the photo using a tool like this could be a good starting point to save you quite a bit of time. What it did fail on is very easy an q

  • Carefully disguised binspam? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This sounds like a spammer, er, I mean marketer who gave careful thought to who is audience was so he would be rated up in firehose.

    Spear-spamming?

  • Is there a website ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by novakyu ( 636495 ) <novakyu@novakyu.net> on Tuesday December 18, 2018 @05:05PM (#57826754) Homepage

    ... that removes spam from Slashdot?

    • Not bad, it did what it supposed to do. Tried with some images, it did the job almost always perfectly. Aslo tried with slashdot screenshoted Einstein's image, no problem. I'm quite impressed.

  • This Slashdot post read so much like spam to me, that I thought there must be some catch, that maybe this was truly magic or a leap forward. So, I tried a few photos that I had paid someone on Upwork to crop, and it worked instantly. Had I had this tool, I would have saved $20 each. Then I googled, "Remove background from image" and tried the first results quickly, and none of them were auto-magical. You had to paint the foreground and background to crop.

    So, yes this post is 100% written like spam, but upon

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      I uploaded an image of me in front of a flat background, taken by a professional photographer. I'm a white guy, wearing a black suit, against a orange-brown background.

      It included a huge section of the background in part of my ear. My plain-black-suit jacked gained curly horns of random background elements. My other ear sloped down to my lower jaw with background.

      It's about what I'd expect from a dumb tool. Gimme JASC Paint Shop Pro 10 Anniversary Edition (from, what, 10 years ago?) or any modern equiva

  • I tossed this together in five minutes [disquscdn.com], with some fairly minor editing to remove one blob remove.bg left in.

  • before [anseladams.com]

    after:

  • Yo momma so ugly it did the opposite.

  • Why is this advert masquerading as an article? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mjlner ( 609829 ) on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @05:02AM (#57828992) Journal

    This "shared report" is 100% advertising. Why is it published as a story?

    An anonymous luser shares a report:

    If you often find yourself needing a refreshing beverage on a hot day, but don't which one to choose, you might want to try Acme Cola. It's a delicious carbonated beverage that drowns your thirst in delicious taste in just 5 seconds.

    Simply unscrew the cap and let your mouth be filled with delicious, refreshing nectar. It will leave you feeling ecstactic and refreshed. Try Acme Cola today!

  • Come on. I knew before I tried it that the results would be abysmal. Any moron can do better with a mouse and Gimp. Why would you bother posting such a story, with such ambivalent, destructive results to the processing of the image? I'm sure there are idiots out there that would use it. Darwinism wins again.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

Slashdot Top Deals

Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable, and three parts which are still under development.

Close