Remove a grey background
Free, no signup, and your image never leaves your device.
Pick the grey with the eyedropper and it is keyed out everywhere it appears. The numbers below are the ones this tool actually uses, so you can set it up in one go.
#808080 · rgb(128, 128, 128)
| Hex | #808080 |
|---|---|
| RGB | 128, 128, 128 |
| CIE L*a*b* | L* 53.6 a* -0.0 b* 0.0 |
| Relative luminance | 22% |
| Match radius at the suggested tolerance | ΔE 4.1 |
Why this tolerance
Neutral colours sit near the centre of the colour space, close to every other greyish tone, so a generous tolerance quickly starts eating neutral parts of the subject. The suggested value is deliberately conservative — raise it only if speckles survive.
Settings to start from
- How to find the background
- By colour
- Tolerance
- 26
- Only the area connected to the edges
- Off
- Remove colour fringe
- On
When this works well
A flat or near-flat grey area that is clearly different from your subject. Compression noise and lighting variation are expected — that is what the tolerance absorbs. Where it struggles is a subject containing the same grey, and there the brush is faster than any amount of slider tuning.
Common questions
What tolerance should I use for a grey background?
Start at 26 and adjust from there. Raise it if flecks of grey survive; lower it if the subject starts disappearing.
It removed part of my subject as well. What now?
The subject contains something close to that grey. Lower the tolerance until the subject is safe, accept the leftover specks, and remove those with the brush — that is reliably faster than finding a tolerance that does both.
Does it remove grey inside the subject too?
Only if you want it to. Leave connectivity on and only the area joined to the edges goes; turn it off and every matching pixel goes, including enclosed gaps.