Cut a person out of any photo

Group photos and one person among many

Remove background picks out the main subject, which works well for a portrait or a full-body shot of one person. In a group photo it may keep everyone together. To extract one person from a photo with several people, erase the others from the mask with the Eraser, or trace around your person with the Lasso.

With Pro, click the person with the AI to select only them, or type “person” into Select by name to put every person on a layer of their own. Each person then exports on their own or together with the others.

Hair, arms and hands

Most trouble in a person cutout sits in three places: hair against a busy background, the gaps between arms and body, and fingers. Zoom in on each. Paint the gap between an arm and the body with the Eraser so the background shows through, and use the Brush to restore a hand or an ear that was trimmed.

For hair, open the Refine panel and turn on Smart radius, which keeps crisp edges crisp and gives soft ones a wider search. The Refine Edge Brush and the Hair & fur action, which keep the finest semi-transparent strands, are Pro features. If a thin halo of the old background remains, the Pro export option Clean edge colours removes that fringe from soft edges.

Where the cutout goes next

A transparent person PNG is ready for a profile picture, a poster, a slide or a team page. In Cutout studio you can put the person on a plain colour for free. A photo background, a drop shadow, an outline, a glow and social or marketplace sizes are Pro options. If you finish the work in Photoshop, save a layered PSD so the person and the original photo stay separate.

Free, unlimited and private

Cutting people out of photos is free and unlimited, with no watermark and no per-image price, so a whole set of headshots costs nothing. Portraits are personal, and that is why it matters where the work happens: the person cutout is made on your own device and the photo is never uploaded to a server.