How to Remove a White Background From an Image

A white background is the easiest kind to remove, and also the easiest to get subtly wrong. This guide covers the two ways to do it, when each one fails, and how to avoid the white fringe that shows up when you place the result on a coloured background.

Method 1: Select the white and delete it

Colour-based tools select every pixel that is close to a chosen colour, then delete it. Preview on a Mac does this with its Markup tools, and most image editors have a magic wand or "select by colour" tool.

1. Open the image in a tool with a colour-based selection.
2. Click the white background. Adjust the tolerance so the selection covers the background but not the subject.
3. Delete the selection, or invert it and copy the subject to a new layer.
4. Export as PNG so the transparency is kept.

On macOS, Apple's Preview guide describes dragging across part of the background, pressing Delete, and repeating until the result looks right. Menu names change between macOS versions, so check Apple's Preview documentation for yours.

It works well when: the background is one flat white, the subject has clear edges, and the subject contains no white or near-white.

It fails when:

• The subject contains white (a white shirt, a white product, a white eye highlight). The tool deletes those parts too and leaves holes.
• The background is not perfectly white. Shadows, a light grey gradient or JPEG noise leave patches behind.
• The edges are soft or detailed, such as hair. Soft edge pixels are a mix of white and the subject colour, and a colour tool cannot separate them cleanly.

Method 2: Use an AI background remover

An AI model decides what the subject is from its shape and context, not from its colour. That makes it the better choice when the subject has white parts or the background is not uniform. See how AI background removal works for the idea in plain language.

1. Open the image in a background remover.
2. Remove the background and check the result.
3. Export as PNG.

For a folder of images on a Mac, BG Remover Pro does this in a batch: drag in the files, press Process Batch, and every result has a before/after slider so you can check the edges. It is our own app, so take that as a disclosure. It runs only on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 14 or later, so on Windows or an Intel Mac use another tool.

How to avoid the white halo

A halo is a thin white line around the cutout. You only see it once you place the result on a dark or coloured background.

• Check on a dark background before you call the cutout finished. A white halo is invisible on a white page.
• Choose a tighter selection (lower tolerance, or shrink the selection by a pixel) if you used a colour tool.
• Use a model with better edge handling if you used AI. In BG Remover Pro, turning on alpha matting helps with fine edges on hair and fur, at the cost of speed.
• Start from a higher-resolution original. Small images have fewer edge pixels to work with, so halos are more visible.

Which method should you use?

Save as PNG, not JPG

JPG cannot store transparency. If you save a cutout as JPG, the transparent area is filled with a solid colour, usually white. Use PNG, or WebP if you need smaller files. For the trade-offs, see PNG vs JPG for transparent images.