The short answer
Drop your photo onto the tool below. The first time, the AI model downloads once (about 98 MB); after that it is ready immediately. The model finds the main subject, a person, an animal or an object, and the background is blurred in the preview. Move Blur strength until the background is as soft as you like, adjust Edge softness if the outline looks cut out, press and hold Hold to see original to compare, then press Download.
Try it here: Blur Background
Open the full tool pageWhy a blurred background looks good
Our eyes go to what is sharp. When everything in a photo is equally sharp, a busy background competes with the subject: signs, cars, other people, furniture. Photographers solve this with a wide aperture and a long lens, which leaves only a thin slice of the scene in focus. The soft, creamy background this creates is often called bokeh.
Phone cameras have small lenses and sensors and keep almost everything sharp, which is why phones added a portrait mode that blurs the background in software. Blurring afterwards does the same for photos taken without portrait mode, screenshots from video calls, older pictures and product shots taken in a cluttered room.
How the tool does it
The blur itself is made by scaling the image down and smoothly back up in several steps. This gives the same result in every browser, including Safari, which does not support the usual canvas blur filter.
- Finding the subject: the photo is analyzed by BiRefNet, the same open AI model used by the Background Remover. It returns a mask: fully white where the subject is, black where the background is and soft gray values along hair and fine edges.
- Blurring only the background: the subject is cut out before blurring, so its colors do not spread into the background. Without this step a red jacket would leave a red glow around the person.
- Filling hidden areas: the parts of the background hidden behind the subject are filled from the surrounding background, so no dark or colored ghost of the subject remains in the blur.
- Putting it together: the sharp original is laid over the blurred background through the mask. Edge softness blurs the mask a little so the transition looks natural.
Choosing the right settings
Blur strength scales with the size of the photo, so a value of 5 looks the same on a small and a large image, and the preview matches the downloaded file. Very high values turn the background into soft color fields, which can look artificial for scenes with a visible floor or ground leading up to the subject; a medium value often looks more like a real camera.
| Photo | Blur strength | Edge softness |
|---|---|---|
| Portrait, head and shoulders | 5 to 7 | 3 to 4 |
| Full body in a busy street | 6 to 8 | 3 |
| Product on a table | 4 to 6 | 1 to 2 |
| Pet with fur | 5 to 7 | 4 to 5 |
| Subtle look for a profile photo | 2 to 4 | 3 |
Which photos work best
The best results come from photos with one clear subject that stands out from the background by color or brightness: a person in front of a building, a dog on a lawn, a bottle on a shelf. The model finds the subject in most normal photos, including people with loose hair, but some situations are harder.
- Several people: the model may keep only the most prominent one or two sharp. Crop the photo so the group fills the frame.
- Objects held in the hand at arm's length, bicycles, chairs with gaps: thin parts may be treated as background and blurred.
- Subject touching the frame edge: works well, the subject stays sharp up to the edge.
- Floor and ground: a real lens blurs the floor gradually with distance. This tool blurs the whole background evenly, so a floor running right up to the feet can look slightly flat. Keep the blur moderate for such photos.
Privacy, speed and file size
The AI model runs inside your browser. Your photo is never uploaded, which matters for portraits of family and friends. With a graphics card the analysis takes a second or two; on the processor alone it can take much longer, especially for the first photo. After the model has downloaded once, it stays in your browser.
The download keeps the size of your photo up to 6000 pixels on the long side. JPG, HEIC and AVIF photos are saved as JPG, PNG and WebP keep their format. Camera information such as the location is not copied to the new file.