I'm trying to remove the background from my photos to sell some stuff on Marketplace, but I don't want to spend money on a premium app. Which free app do you guys recommend that actually works well?
remove.bg is basically the go-to for background removal, and the free version works pretty well for most photos. you just take screenshots from the website or download the app, send the photo and done - you get the image without background in decent quality. there's a daily request limit on the free version, but for selling stuff on Marketplace it usually gets the job done.
another option is pixlr, which has a free online editor with an integrated background removal tool. it's not as automatic as remove.bg, but you get more control if the photo has tricky details. i've used it for small products and it works fine, though it does require a bit more patience.
if you want something more powerful without paying, gimp (desktop, not mobile) removes backgrounds for real with professional quality, but then it's more work and you need to learn how to use it. for speeding up marketplace sales honestly, i'd go with remove.bg or pixlr - both free and not too complicated.
Photoshop Express (Adobe's official mobile version) lets you remove backgrounds for free and with decent quality for product photos - just open the photo, go to "Remove Tool" and let the AI do the work. People here have already mentioned remove.bg which also works well, but if you want everything in a single app without leaving Adobe it's worth testing Express first.
A question though: are your photos of specific products (clothing, electronics) or more of a mix of things? Depending on the type of object the quality can vary quite a bit.
If you're selling on Marketplace, it's totally worth testing out Canva - it has a free version and the background removal tool is really intuitive, you just click on the photo, select "Edit image" and then "Remove background", takes a few seconds. The cool thing is that besides removing the background, you can put another one in its place or leave it transparent right in the app, which helps a lot for product photos to look professional without needing to edit them somewhere else afterwards.
Since the guys recommended the most popular options, let me tell you about one that's kind of underground but works super well for people selling on Marketplace - Canva. Yeah, that app for making posters and stuff, but it has a background removal feature that's free and decent quality. You open the photo in Canva, click "Edit image" and then "Remove background", let the AI process it, and then download the image with no watermark. The cool thing is you can manually adjust it if there's any leftover from the photo or if it cut off something important from the product.
The thing is, for product photos (which is your case on Marketplace), any of these options will work fine. But I'm gonna give you a practical tip that people don't usually mention: before using any app, take the photo with as much contrast as possible between the object and the background. Plain white background, good lighting, no shadows - that cuts the AI's work in half and the result comes out way cleaner without having to adjust pixel by pixel afterwards. If you take the photo that way, even the free version of any of these apps will deliver something professional to sell.
If the removal quality turns out pretty bad, it's worth testing Cleanup.pictures in your browser - it's free, doesn't ask for sign-up, and works way better than a lot of product apps, even though it's less well-known. The thing is, both remove.bg and Photoshop Express work better with photos that have clear contrast between the product and the background, so if your item is the same color as the background, you might have to take the photo again with better lighting.
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