Remove a background in PhotoCraft

Updated October 14, 2026. Written for PhotoCraft 0.8.2 (what changed since).

Remove Background, on your device

1. Open the editor and drag your photo onto the canvas.
2. Select the photo layer. In the Properties panel, click Remove Background.
3. PhotoCraft hides the background with a layer mask. A locked Background layer becomes a normal layer first, so it can hold transparency.
4. To fix the edge, paint on the mask with the Brush: black hides, white reveals. For hair and fur, the Select Subject route below gives you Select and Mask.
5. Export with File › Export › Quick Export as PNG, or File › Export › Export As… with PNG or WebP. Both keep the transparency; JPEG would fill it.

Behind the button is Select Subject plus a light edge refinement, turned into a mask in one history step. The refinement gives soft edges and hair partial transparency instead of a hard cut, and one Undo takes the whole thing back. It looks at the selected layer alone and works only on an unlocked pixel layer, so a type layer, a shape or a smart object has to be turned into pixels first with Layer › Rasterize.

Because the cut-out is a mask, no pixel is deleted. Turn the mask off and the background is back; put a new layer underneath and you have a new background. Clicking Remove Background a second time replaces the mask instead of stacking another one.

Whole image or just the cut-out

The two Quick Export commands give different files. File › Export › Quick Export as PNG exports the whole canvas at full size, so the subject stays where it was with transparent space around it. Layer › Quick Export as PNG exports only the selected layer, cropped to the pixels the mask leaves visible. For a product shot that goes on a store page or into another design, the cropped one is usually what you want.

Select Subject when you want more control

Select › Subject makes a selection of the main subject instead of masking straight away. Add to it or subtract from it with Quick Selection or the lassos, refine hair and fur with Select › Select and Mask…, then turn the selection into a mask with Layer › Layer Mask › Reveal Selection. This is the route for a photo with two people when you want one, or a product on a table when the table should go too.

Remove a background with AI

When fixing the mask by hand would take longer than the photo is worth, an image model is the other option. Open AI tools in the editor's top bar and sign in to use EasyRunCraft credits. Then:

1. Get the photo into the panel. Export it from PhotoCraft with File › Export › Quick Export as PNG and a copy lands in the panel, or use Upload an image in the panel itself.
2. Click the Remove background preset. The preset selects a GPT Image model and enables Transparent background to generate a transparent PNG.
3. Click Open in PhotoCraft. The result opens as a new document; to bring it into another one, use Select › All and Edit › Copy, switch documents, and Edit › Paste.

With EasyRunCraft credits, GPT Image 2.5 Flare costs 11 credits per image at medium quality and 37 at high; the pricing page lists every model. The AI image editor page explains the available AI features.

An image model draws the whole picture again rather than masking the original, so small text on a label, a logo or a face can come back slightly different. For product photos where every pixel has to stay, we'd use Remove Background and fix the mask by hand.

Cutting a subject out is also how you put text behind it: adding text to a photo covers the type side, and the type layer goes between the masked copy and the original.