Remove Background
Cut a person out of a photo, on your device — no upload.
Remove Background cuts the person out of a portrait and gives you a PNG with a transparent background, or the subject on a solid colour, processed on your own device with an open-source portrait model. The model (about 38 MB of program code) downloads once from unboundpdf.com the first time you use the tool and is then cached; the photo itself is never sent anywhere. Built for photographs of people — on product shots and other subjects it drops most of the subject, so it is not offered as a general cut-out tool.
Remove Background cuts a person out of a photo on your own device — free, in your browser, with no account and no watermark. The model is downloaded once and runs locally; the photo is not uploaded to a server.
How to remove background — steps & common uses
What people use Remove Background for
People working with photographs of other people — headshots, profile pictures and portraits headed for an ID photo.
- Get a transparent PNG of a headshot
- Put a plain background behind a portrait
- Prepare a photo for a passport crop
- Clean up a profile picture
- Place a person on a coloured card
How to remove background
- Drop in a photo of a person; it is read on your device and never uploaded.
- Press the button that shows the one-time download size, and wait while the engine and the portrait model arrive from this site.
- Choose a transparent background or a solid colour.
- Run it, then download the PNG — the result reports the dimensions and whether the file really carries transparency.
Good to know: Portraits only. The first use downloads the model (about 38 MB) from unboundpdf.com; your photo stays on your device.
Questions about Remove Background 7
Are my files uploaded to a server?
No. UnboundPDF processes PDFs locally in the browser — documents are not uploaded to a server. We have no backend that receives, stores, or scans your files.
How large is the download, and when does it happen?
Nothing is fetched until you press the button, and the button states the size first: the WebAssembly runtime and the portrait model together. Both are served from unboundpdf.com rather than a third-party CDN, and your browser keeps them for later visits.
Does the photo leave my device?
No. The model is downloaded to the photo, not the other way round. Inference runs in WebAssembly inside the tab, and the tool makes no request other than those asset downloads.
Does it work on product photos or objects?
It is a portrait model. Measured on a portrait and on a close-up with complex hair it produces a clean cut-out; on a product flat-lay it drops most of the subject. That is why it is offered as a portrait tool and not as a general background remover.
How long does one photo take?
Several seconds on a current laptop, and longer on an older phone. It is an asynchronous job with a progress line, not a live preview.
What licence is the model under?
MODNet, Apache-2.0, from the ZHKKKe/MODNet project, with onnxruntime-web (MIT) as the runtime. Both are listed with their full licence texts on the licences page.
Why is the output always a PNG?
A JPEG cannot store transparency. Writing a transparent cut-out as a JPEG would silently flatten it onto white, so both the transparent and the solid-colour results are written as PNG.
Read more
How your files are handled
The work runs on your own device, inside the browser tab — so there is no server to send your document to.
- Nothing is uploaded. We have no backend that receives or stores documents, so we cannot see your files during processing or after.
- Your device does the work. Large documents are handled in stages, pages are rendered as you reach them, and each job is checked against your device before it starts — so a long run takes longer on a phone than on a laptop, nothing is queued behind other people's jobs, and you can stop a run at any point without touching your original file.
- No account and no watermark. The output is a clean file you can use anywhere, with no sign-up and no hourly cap.
More images tools
Other free PDF utilities that work the same way — in your browser, no sign-up.