removebgpictureStart
Two white camellias on a pale grey studio backdrop, before the background is removedBeforeAfter · PNG

JPG to PNG with a transparent background

Turn a JPG into a clear PNG.

JPGs can't be see-through. Drop one in and save it as a PNG with the background gone.

or drop it here · paste with CtrlV

FreeFull sizeNo sign-up

Your browser does the cutting. There's no server on the other end.

No photo handy? · several photos at once open the batch queue

What this page does, in detail

Renaming a JPG to PNG does not make it transparent — the background has to come out first. Open the JPG, the background is removed, and the result is written as a PNG with a real alpha channel.

The first cutout fits colour models to your own picture, with nothing downloaded, so it is at its best when subject and ground differ in colour or brightness. Fine hair against a busy background, glass, netting and motion blur come back rough — the brushes are the honest fix.

If the subject is a person, the Cut panel offers a network trained on people instead — 5.9 MB the first time you ask for it, kept in this browser afterwards, about 90 ms a picture (estimate, not yet timed on a named device for this site).

JPG or JPEG files from a camera, a phone or the web. Several at once open a queue.

Why a JPG cannot be transparent

JPEG stores three channels: red, green and blue. There is no fourth channel for “how much of this pixel is here”, so a JPG with a white background has white pixels where you wanted nothing. A PNG can store that fourth channel, which is why it is the format to save a cutout in — but the channel has to be filled in by removing the background, not by renaming the file.

This page opens on the guided selection with a slightly wider edge band and a softer ramp than the front page, because JPEG compression smears edges. If your JPG is a logo or a product on a flat colour, the colour-key pages are usually better still.

  • Detail lost to compression stays lost. Removing the background cannot restore hair or texture that the JPEG encoder threw away.
  • The PNG will be larger than the JPG. PNG is lossless, so the same picture takes more bytes. Choose WebP on the Save panel for a smaller file that still keeps transparency.

Questions about JPG to PNG

I converted my JPG to PNG and the background is still there. Why?

Because changing the format does not create transparency. A JPG has no alpha channel, so every pixel of its background is a real colour; a PNG converted from it has the same pixels. The background has to be removed — which is what this page does — and only then does the PNG carry transparency.

Why does the edge look blocky on some JPGs?

Heavy JPEG compression leaves an 8 × 8 pixel grid and halos around sharp edges. When the page detects that grid on open, it starts the edge band 3 pixels wider so the matte rides over the artefacts instead of tracing them, and tells you it did.

My JPG has a plain white or coloured background. Is there a better method?

Yes — the colour key. When the border of your JPG is one flat colour, the Cut panel offers to switch to the key on that colour, which unmixes the edge against it and usually gives cleaner anti-aliasing than the guided selection. Undo brings the other result back so you can compare.

Can I convert a whole folder of JPGs?

Yes. Drop several files at once and they open as a queue, up to twenty-five; each one is cut and saved as a transparent PNG in one ZIP.

Related

Made here, from one photo

One cutout, four ways to use it

The original photograph: white camellias on a grey studio backdrop
The original photo