#CreateWithChromeBooks - Remove.bg is a game changer in the graphics game

For years I have struggled with removing backgrounds in portraits. My old standbys have been the Instant Alpha tool in Apple's Keynote and the magic wand selection tool in Pixlr. Both take time with janky workflows and neither produce the perfect final product.

Along comes the new website Remove.bg that works in a web browser like Google Chrome but also on mobile devices in the browser and without a standalone app!

While arguably not 100% perfect...it's as close as I have seen and way faster than anything I have tried. As the site says it works "100% automatically - in 5 seconds - without a single click". Just select your image by uploading or by entering a URL and watch the magic happen.

Here is a picture of my wife and me on the train in Northern California and with the background removed by the site. I then used Pixlr and layered that on top of an image of Times Square at midnight on New Years Eve. Being crammed in the cold with a million people, in the immortal words of Old Blue Eyes, is our "idea of nothing to do" but nobody on Instagram needs to know all we did was eat a dozen pizza rolls and go to bed at 10:15.

Screenshot of the Remove.bg user interface

Happy New Year

The iPad user experience is almost identical. Images can be imported from your camera roll. Transparent images are then downloaded back to your camera roll and available in your favorite graphic design apps that support layers. In this example, Remove.bg deleted the very complex background of the real Times Square.