Make a photo background white
A clean white background is required for almost every passport, visa and professional photo. You can do it in your browser in under a minute.
Drop a photo here, or tap to choose
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For most documents you do not need true background removal — you need to start with a near-white wall and clean it up. The tool below applies a white-balance correction and lets you set the background color to pure #FFFFFF on export.
If your background is already a different color (blue, gray, outdoor scene), use the built-in background-removal step. It runs entirely in your browser using a small ML model and replaces the background with white, blue, or gray.
For best results, photograph the subject at least one meter away from the wall to avoid hard shadows, and use diffuse front lighting.
Three approaches, ranked by ease
1. The "tighter crop" trick (no AI)
If your subject already fills most of the frame and the background is reasonably uniform, the easiest fix is to crop tighter. Less background means less to replace. For passport-style headshots this often skips the background-removal step entirely.
2. In-browser AI background removal
The editor's "Remove background" button loads an in-browser AI model (about 6 MB, cached after first use) that isolates the subject from the background. The model runs entirely in your browser — no upload, no service call. Once isolated, set the background color to white and you have a clean, document-ready photo.
3. Re-shoot against a real white wall
For passport, visa and ID photos that will be checked carefully, nothing beats actually shooting against a clean off-white surface with even lighting. See our at-home shooting guide for the lighting setup.
Authority requirements
"White" is rarely a single value. Most national passport offices accept off-white through very pale grey, define a brightness range (usually 230–255 on the 0–255 scale), and reject anything with a visible color cast. Country-specific tolerances are documented on each country page — for example, US passport, UK passport, India passport.
Common pitfalls
- Halo around the hair. AI removal often leaves a faint colored halo from the original background. Re-cropping tighter or doing a second pass usually clears it.
- Glasses reflections. The model can't tell a reflection from real lens content. If you wear glasses for the photo, take the shot with side lighting that doesn't bounce off the lenses.
- Shadows on the wall. A slightly darker patch in the corner of the original photo gets baked into the new white background. Replace it with the editor's white fill or re-shoot.