There are times when you just want the subject of a photo, not anything lingering in the background. Luckily, there’s a quick and reliable way to remove the background from an image on a Mac, and you don’t need any expensive Photoshop-grade software to do it, either. It’s simple to do with the Mac’s built-in Preview app. Here’s how to do it.
Time needed: 2 minutes
Quickly remove a background from an image on a Mac
- Open the image in Preview
By default, if you double-click on an image on a Mac it should open in Preview. If you’ve set another default app for images, right-click on the image file, choose Open with… and select Preview from the drop-down menu.
- Choose the Remove Background tool
With the image open, select Tools from the Menu Bar and then Remove Background.
- Convert to PNG
When you select the Remove Background tool, you’ll see a pop-up asking if you want to convert to PNG. Choose this option. PNG is an image format that supports transparency, meaning the subject of the photo can be saved with no image/colour in the background.
- Save your new image
Now the background has been removed, save the image and you should now have the subject alone. If you’re not happy with the cut out, you can always press Command + Z to undo the background removal and put the image back to its original form.
Now you have the image that has been cut-out from the background, you can use other photo-editing software to place that image on a new background. Alternatively, you can insert the image on a website like this, and it will appear against the website’s background colour, as you can see below:
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