2026-07-17

Background Removal Update — Keeping Dark Capes and Detail on Dark Backgrounds

There's one case that trips up AI background removal more than any other: a dark subject on a dark background. A deep-red cape draped over a black backdrop, an armor edge that fades into shadow. You can clearly see it, but the segmentation model reads these low-contrast areas as background and erases them along with the character. This update tackles that head-on — and improves the editor you use to touch up the result.

Recovering detail that used to vanish into dark backgrounds

When the background is a single flat colour — pure black, an even grey — we no longer rely on the AI model alone; we key the background out by colour. Flooding inward from the edges, we remove only the region connected to the backdrop colour, and whatever is left inside — a cape that touches the background but isn't the background colour — is brought back at full, solid opacity instead of a faded, semi-transparent ghost. Where a dark cape used to show through in vertical streaks, it now stays as one whole piece. Small stray specks floating in the background are cleaned up automatically, as long as they're detached from the character. This only kicks in on solid backgrounds, so photographic or busy backdrops are left untouched.

Dial in how much gets removed

Different backgrounds need a different strength. A pure-black backdrop calls for a gentle touch to protect the cape; a slightly mottled grey background needs a firmer hand to strip its texture. So the "Character detail protection" slider now controls exactly that — slide toward "Preserve detail" to remove gently and keep more dark detail, or toward "Clean edges" to strip the background more aggressively. Change the value and hit "Apply settings" to reprocess instantly.

Tools to touch up by hand — restore, erase, wand

For when the automatic result isn't perfect, the "Edit" view gives you three brushes. The wand erases a connected patch of similar colour in one click — handy for leftover background. The restore brush paints missing areas back in, pulling them from the original image. New in this update, the eraser does the opposite: it wipes away wherever you paint, by hand — great for cleaning up the small bits the wand misses. Brush size and undo (Ctrl+Z) work across all of them.

Background colours, zoom, and other conveniences

Top-left of the editor, a set of swatches switches the transparency checkerboard colour — beyond the default grey, try green, blue, or purple to see how a dark character reads against different backings. When you click a preview to enlarge it, the top-right buttons or your mouse wheel zoom in and out, and you can drag to inspect details up close. The button that opens the editor was also reworked so it's clear at a glance what it does.

Get started

Background removal runs in your browser and is free. Upload an image on the "Background removal" tab in the workspace and you'll get the automatic cutout right away; use the "Edit" button to refine it with the tools above. If you have an image where a dark character or cape used to defeat background removal, give it another try.