There are several ways to make cutouts in Photoshop, but now there’s a plugin that does it for you in a matter of seconds. Recently launched by remove.bg, this plugin lets you remove background in a single click. It’s free for download, but there are extra perks if you opt for one of the paid versions.
Previously, remove.bg was released only as a free web-based app. You were supposed to upload a photo to the website and AI would do the rest. When it was first launched, it was only capable of removing background from images of people, but now you can use it for product shots, too. I played with it a bit back then to see how it worked, and you can see the results here.
Now there’s also a Photoshop plugin that lets you cut out the subject and remove the background from images. So, how does it work? First, you need to install the plugin, and you can download it at Adobe Exchange. After this, there will new menu option available in Photoshop at Window > Extensions > Remove Background. When you click the Remove Background button, the image is processed through the remove.bg API. So, bear in mind that you need an active Internet connection and an API key from remove.bg. Now, as for the pricing, the free plan lets you process 50 small images (up to 0.25 megapixels, e.g. 625×400) for free each month. However, photographers will likely benefit more from some of the paid plans. They start from $9 per month up to $219 per month, depending on the number of images you need to process. Although the 0.25 MP images are really tiny, if you work on small web graphics, the free plan can be quite enough. The remove.bg team confirmed to DPReview that this limitation is due to technical reasons. Still, they’re working on support for higher resolutions in the future, so photographers will likely have more benefits from the free plan soon. [via DPReview]
