I reviewed the revolutionary cutout tool remove.bg a couple of months back, and marveled at its ability to remove backgrounds from images of people in an instant – with far more accuracy than Photoshop can manage on its own.
At the time, we commented that it would be useful if the website could return not just a cutout, but a Photoshop file with a layer mask to enable later editing. Now remove.bg has its own Photoshop extension, which does just that – and here’s how it works.
1: Choose your image
This image of a girl with red-brown hair, shot against a red-brown background, would be tricky to cut out using Photoshop’s built-in tools. But having downloaded the plug-in (and registered for an account, to get your API key) all you have to do is open the tool’s window and click Remove Background.
2: The result
In an instant, the file is uploaded to the remove.bg servers and downloaded straight back into the same Photoshop file. Now, the background is duplicated, and the new layer is cutout with a layer mask. Already, it’s an acceptable cutout; the layer mask allows for some extra tweaking.
3: A more difficult case
This image of a group of people in a tug of war is especially difficult to work with. Once again, a single click in the plug-in’s window sends it for processing.
4: The result
As expected, the result isn’t perfect. In particular, the soldier on the far right has much of his camouflage uniform missing – which isn’t surprising, since camouflage is specifically designed to blend into the background.
5: The fix
Because the image is returned with a layer mask, it’s easy to then paint the missing areas back in. To perform this entire task in Photoshop alone would have been a lengthy job. You’ll still have to deal with the shoes awkwardly half-hidden in grass, though.
6: It’s not just people
The remove.bg engine has been extended to cover ‘product photography’ – that is, when the product in question is clearly delineated from its background. I tried it on this moody shot of a vintage car.
7: A near-perfect cutout
The results are extraordinary: the car is almost perfectly cutout, with just some background creeping in inside the wire wheel and steering wheel. Both are relatively easy to correct.
8: Pricing and conclusion
As before, remove.bg is 100% free for images up to a quarter of a megapixel, for personal use. For larger images – up to 10 MP – you need a premium subscription, which works out at a dollar or less per image on pay-as-you-go credits, or much less than that if you opt for a monthly subscription.
Where remove.bg was useful as a standalone website, it’s almost indispensable as a Photoshop plug-in. For the busy Photoshop artist, this tool really does save valuable time that you could be spending creating art, rather than performing laborious cutouts.
This article was last modified on May 28, 2019
This article was first published on May 28, 2019
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