Background removal

Summary

Remove Background opens a dedicated editor for erasing part of an image — automatically or by hand — before that erased (transparent) area becomes part of your design. It works on a placed image layer or directly on an uploaded file that hasn't been placed yet.

Use it when

• You want a subject to sit directly on the blotter stock or on other layers, without its original background.
• Automatic removal doesn't cleanly separate the subject, and you need to finish the edges by hand.
• You want to erase a flat, uniform-color background specifically, rather than freehand around a subject.

Before you begin

You need an uploaded image — either placed on the artboard and selected, or still sitting in Uploads as an unplaced card. Remove Background does not work on paint, shape, path, text, or template layers.

Steps

1. Open the tool from either entry point:
   • Select a placed image layer, then select Remove Background in the inspector (below Creative filters).
   • Or open the ⋯ menu on an upload card in Uploads and select Remove background, without placing it first.
2. In the Remove Background editor, choose a method:
   • Auto Remove — attempts automatic background detection. Shows Removing… while processing.
   • Magic Wand — click a point; erases the contiguous region of similar color connected to that point.
   • Global Erase Color — click a point; erases every pixel of similar color anywhere in the image, not just the connected region.
   • Square Marquee / Circle Marquee — drag a shape to erase inside it.
   • Erase Brush / Restore Brush — paint to erase, or paint back in what an earlier step erased.
3. Adjust Tolerance before using Magic Wand or Global Erase Color — higher tolerance erases a wider range of similar colors from a single click.
4. Select Apply to commit the result, or Cancel to discard every edit made in this session and leave the image untouched.

What changes

• On a layer that was already placed, Apply updates that same layer in place — it keeps its existing name and position, it is not replaced by a new layer.
• Applying shows Applying edits at full resolution… before closing — the interactive preview while you work is not full resolution, but the committed result is generated at the source file's full resolution.
• Cancel discards the entire editing session. Reopening the tool afterward starts from the original, unedited image again — confirmed by reopening after Magic Wand and Global Erase Color edits that were never applied.
• Erased areas become transparent, not white or any other fill color.

Print note

Background removal produces transparency in the layer. Whatever is beneath a transparent area — the artboard's base color, another layer, or the uncoated stock itself once printed — shows through it. This article does not verify how transparency is represented in the exported print PDF; if that matters for your order, confirm it in Export PNG or Print PDF + Silhouette cut guide before relying on it.

Warnings and limits

• Auto Remove can fail outright. Testing against the built-in demo artwork produced Auto removal failed — use manual tools instead. — treat automatic removal as something that may not work for a given image, not a guaranteed result.
• Remove Background is unavailable for non-image layers and for an empty selection — the button is disabled with the helper text Select a placed image to remove its background until a placed image layer is selected.
• Using Remove background from an unplaced upload's ⋯ menu opens the same editor and Cancel leaves both the canvas and the upload untouched, confirmed directly. Needs product confirmation: exactly what Apply produces from this pre-placement entry point — whether it places a new layer with the background already removed, edits the source upload file in place, or requires a separate Place image/Fill canvas step afterward. Testing in this session was inconsistent on this specific point, so it is not documented as a procedure here.
• Needs product confirmation: the exact drag and paint mechanics of Square Marquee, Circle Marquee, Erase Brush, and Restore Brush. Their tab buttons, and the fact that they are separate modes from Magic Wand and Global Erase Color, are confirmed; the click- and-drag gesture itself could not be reliably reproduced with this session's testing tools (the same limitation noted for stage pan/zoom in Artboard, stage, and tool rail), so their step-by-step use is not documented here as instruction.

Desktop and mobile

The Remove Background editor, its seven tool tabs, and the Tolerance slider were confirmed identical at 390 × 844 and on desktop — reached the same way, from the inspector's Remove Background button or an upload card's ⋯ menu on both layouts.

Troubleshooting

Related topics

• Place vs. Fill canvas
• Supported files and upload limits
• Layers and layout: select, reorder & rename
• Export PNG

Verification note

Verified against Blotter Builder on 2026-07-20.

Source notes

Primary observations — all from the live application at https://blotterbuilder.tdl.fyi, 2026-07-20, using the built-in demo artwork:

• Observed — Remove Background in the inspector is disabled with helper text Select a placed image to remove its background until a placed image layer is selected, then becomes enabled.
• Observed — selecting Remove Background opened a modal titled REMOVE BACKGROUND with tabs Auto Remove, Magic Wand, Global Erase Color, Square Marquee, Circle Marquee, Erase Brush, Restore Brush, a Tolerance slider (range 1–60, displayed as a percentage), and Cancel/Apply.
• Observed — Auto Remove changed its own label to Removing… and disabled itself while processing, then produced Auto removal failed — use manual tools instead. on the demo artwork.
• Observed — with Magic Wand active at 15% tolerance, clicking a point in the image's uniform-gray sky erased only that contiguous sky region, leaving the more textured crowd-photo area at the bottom intact.
• Observed — with Global Erase Color active at the same tolerance and click point, the erased area extended to every similarly colored region across the whole image, including the separate paper-texture prop and highlights in the crowd photo — not just the contiguous sky.
• Observed — raising Tolerance from 15% to 50% and repeating the Magic Wand click from the same point erased a visibly larger contiguous region, extending into the crowd-photo edges that the 15% tolerance had left intact.
• Observed — selecting Cancel after making edits, then reopening Remove Background on the same layer, showed the original image with no trace of the prior edit.
• Observed — selecting Apply after a Magic Wand edit displayed Applying edits at full resolution… before the modal closed; the layer in Layers kept its existing name (Image 1) rather than being replaced.
• Observed — an unplaced upload's ⋯ menu includes Remove background alongside Place image, Fill canvas, and Delete; selecting it opened the same REMOVE BACKGROUND modal. Selecting Cancel from this entry point left Layers at No layers yet and the upload card unchanged.
• Observed — at 390 × 844, the same modal opened from the same upload card menu item, with the same seven tools and controls, stacked instead of inlined.
• Needs product confirmation — the committed result of Apply when entered via the pre-placement upload-card path; see Warnings and limits.
• Needs product confirmation — Square Marquee, Circle Marquee, Erase Brush, Restore Brush interaction mechanics; see Warnings and limits.

Verification log