Windows 11 Paint And Photos App: Follow These Steps To Remove Background Image

The popular PC platform from Microsoft, Windows 11, comes with built-in photo-editing software like Paint and Photos. These apps have features that allow users to change the background colour of an image to a solid colour or remove it altogether without having to download an additional third-party app. In addition, this feature lets users remove the background from any image with a single click, much like Photoshop’s built-in functionality.

The Windows 11 Paint app can be used to remove an image's entire background and replace it with transparency. However, users should keep in mind that if they want to save an image with a transparent background, they must do so as a PNG file. Other formats, such as JPG, do not allow transparent images.

Here’s how to use Windows 11’s built-in Paint and Photos app to replace an image's background with a solid colour or remove it entirely:

How to remove the background from an image using Paint

1. Locate the image from which you want to delete the background.

2. From the context menu, right-click the image and select “Open With > Paint.”

3. When you open Paint, go to the “Image” section at the top.

4. Click the Remove Background icon.

5. Wait for Paint to clear the background.

6. After that, you will see the edited image.

7. Save this image without a background. Choose the File option

8. Click Save from the menu bar of Paint, or use the shortcut Ctrl+S.

Meanwhile, paint also lets users remove only a portion of an image’s background.

Steps to remove a portion of the background from an image

– Open Paint and select the image.

– In the top “Selection” section, click the down-arrow icon and select “Rectangle.” (Users are unable to select the “Free-form” selection tool through the app. Using it disables Paint’s background removal feature.)

– To remove the background from a section of an image, use the rectangle tool.

– After making the selection, choose the Remove Background option from the top “Image” section.

-Wait for Paint to remove that part of the background before saving the image.

Here’s how you can change an image's background to a solid colour:

1. Select an image in the Photos app.

2. Open the Edit Image menu in the top bar (or press Ctrl+E)

3. Select the background removal and replacement tool, represented by the icon of a person with lines behind them.

4. Select the “Replace” option in the right pane.

5. From the colour palette, select the colour to fill your image's current background. (If you know the HEX or RGB code of a colour, you can enter it in the provided boxes to quickly find the desired colour.

6. After finalising the colour, you can either click the “Apply” option to apply the setting or select “Reset Background” to reset your preferences at the bottom of the right pane.

7. You can either overwrite the original with the edited image or save the new one as a copy.