Free Tool · No Signup · 100% In Your Browser
Free Background Remover + Stencil Maker
Upload a photo, remove the background, and turn the subject into a clean black-and-white stencil SVG with an optional cut outline. Everything runs in your browser, so the photo never leaves your device. Free, no account, no watermark.
Your photo, its cutout and the stencil appear here.
From photo to a one-piece laser stencil
A stencil has to survive as a single connected piece of material with no islands falling out. Turning a photo into one means isolating the subject, converting it to pure black and white, and bridging every trapped shape. Here is the workflow that holds together.
Start by removing the background
A stencil trace follows contrast, so any background detail becomes part of the cut. Removing the background first leaves the subject alone on white, which gives the black-and-white conversion a single clean edge to follow instead of a tangle of unwanted shapes. This one step does more for stencil quality than any amount of cleanup afterward.
Black and white, with no grey in between
A cut stencil is binary. Material is either there or it is not, so gradients and soft edges have to collapse into pure black and pure white before cutting. This is where the subject becomes a bold graphic shape. The trick is to keep the shapes confident and connected, because thin wisps and hairline detail that look fine on screen will be too fragile to cut and too small to survive peeling off the bed.
Bridge the islands or lose them
Once the subject is a black shape, any white area fully enclosed by black, and any black island floating in white, is a piece that will fall out or a hole that will not hold. Bridging adds small tabs that tie those pieces back to the main body, so the whole stencil stays as one connected object. A stencil generator does this automatically, but it is worth understanding, because it is the difference between a stencil you can lift in one hand and a pile of loose fragments.
Stencil workflow checklist
- ›Remove the background before converting. The trace only follows contrast.
- ›Collapse tones to pure black and white. A cut stencil cannot hold grey.
- ›Keep shapes bold and connected. Hairline detail is too fragile to cut and peel.
- ›Bridge every enclosed island so the stencil stays one piece.
- ›For reusable stencils, thicker material and slightly wider bridges last far longer.
How it works
An AI model running in your browser separates the subject from the background and gives you a transparent PNG cutout.
A threshold slider, detail presets, and an invert toggle turn the cutout into crisp black-and-white stencil artwork, re-rendered live.
Pick a width in millimetres and download the SVG. It imports at exact physical size, with an optional red cut outline around the subject.
Your photo stays on your device
Most background removers upload your photo to a server. This one does not. The AI model downloads once, about 40MB, and your browser caches it. From then on, background removal, stencil tracing, and outline generation all happen locally. That makes it private, fast after the first use, and free to run without limits.
What you can make
Spray paint stencils, laser engraving artwork, vinyl decals, screen printing film, scrapbooking cutouts, pet portraits, keychains, and sticker-style cutouts with a clean offset cut line. The SVGs open in LightBurn, xTool Creative Space, Glowforge, Cricut Design Space, Silhouette Studio, Inkscape, and Illustrator.
Frequently asked questions
Is my photo uploaded to a server?
No. Both the background removal and the stencil tracing run entirely inside your browser, so your photo never leaves your device. The first use downloads the AI model, about 40MB, which your browser caches. After that, every photo processes locally and much faster.
What photos work best?
A clear subject with good contrast against the background: people, pets, products, logos, plants. Sharp focus and even lighting on the subject give the cleanest cutout and stencil. Very busy scenes with many overlapping subjects are harder for the AI to separate.
What is the cut outline?
An optional contour drawn a few millimetres outside the stencil silhouette. Use it as the cut line when you want a sticker-style cutout, a keychain, or to cut the finished stencil free from the sheet while the black areas are engraved or painted.
What files do I get?
Four downloads: the cutout as a transparent PNG, the stencil as a black-and-white PNG, the stencil as an SVG, and when the cut outline is on, an SVG that contains both the stencil and the outline. The SVGs are sized in millimetres so they import at true physical size.
What software can open the SVG?
LightBurn, xTool Creative Space, Glowforge, Cricut Design Space, Silhouette Studio, Inkscape, Illustrator, and any laser, vinyl, or CNC software that reads SVG. The black areas are the stencil artwork and the red contour is the cut line.
Is it really free?
Yes. No signup, no watermark, no limits. Because all the processing happens on your device instead of our servers, we can keep the tool completely free.
Want a cut outline around an engrave-style image instead? Try the outline maker, or convert any image to SVG with the free converter.