Here’s How They Turned Out

Replacing the backgrounds in your photos can drastically change their mood, and you don’t need to spend hours making manual adjustments in your editing software. I tried a handful of AI-powered apps to add new backgrounds to my existing photos and see which one was the best.

Fotor is one of the best affordable photo editing toolsand in the past, I’ve used it for basic adjustments and to add multiple effects. Next was an experiment to replace backgrounds, and I started with this picture of a street scene in my hometown:

Since this picture was taken on a cloudy day, I was curious to change the sky to something brighter. I didn’t know how it would work, because the person in the picture is wearing clothes clearly designed for cold weather, but either way, I think it’s worth a try. As you can tell from the result below, this…didn’t go to plan. The app took too much of my background out of the picture.

I thought I should use a picture with a very light background instead. So, I tried again with Fotor with the picture below. As you can see, it is very clear where the bottom of the image starts.

Interestingly, this was even more difficult to change than the first. The app seemed to glitch every few seconds, meaning I had to reload the picture three times. However, the results were significantly better once I could edit the image. Fotor seems better to replace the background if the subject is close.

I had to think about the distance from the background, though, which meant I was limited by what I would have otherwise been with my background choices.

Since you can do many interesting things with Adobe Expressand I use the app almost every day, it was a viable candidate for my next round of editing experimentation. Realizing that many AI background replacement tools work best with a clear primary subject, I chose this image for my first attempt in Adobe Express:

To replace the background in Adobe Express, I searched Remove the background on the home page. I then uploaded my image, after which Adobe Express gave me a list of options that I could choose from for my picture. Below are some of my options; I could also segment on the category I wanted.

Since the original picture was taken on a cloudy day, I wanted to see what would happen if I changed it to a sunny one. Surprisingly, it worked really well. i still can say the picture has been modified with AIbut it’s certainly more realistic than a lot of edits I’ve seen elsewhere.

Now that I have regained some confidence, I decided to be more experimental. For my next edit in Adobe Express, I used the picture below. As you can see, it is more difficult to distinguish the background; for this reason, I think it would be the perfect opportunity to see how the publisher has performed in more challenging scenarios.

As you can see, the lack of a clear background clearly confused my software. Rather than remove a small part of the picture, remove almost everything.

However, he wanted to see if he could still salvage the situation. I tried Chill Spot as this background includes mountains that are far away, although it was a different season. And as you can see from my results below, it didn’t work. I only use these tools for close-up portraits of people remove the bottom in the future.

I tuned my image selection for the remaining tests with my newfound wisdom about what doesn’t work with AI background replacement. In addition to choosing clear backgrounds, I also made sure that my photos had a very clear subject; doing so allowed me to test these tools more accurately. Remove.bg was the next app I tried, and to start the next phase of my experiment, I used this picture:

I was clearly restricted in what I could choose for my background, as I needed to include water. However, most of my photos so far have been land based, so I thought this was worth a try. Remove.bg, as it turns out, actually has a lot of water-oriented backgrounds, many of which include real-world destinations. I needed something expansive to put in the boat, and below, you will see the final result.

While the composition works, it is very obvious that this image was generated with AI. I also don’t like how I couldn’t move the boat; in my opinion, this would have helped the image a little more real.

I wanted to give Remove.bg another chance, and to do this, I used a photo taken on the ground. Here is the photo I used:

Remove.bg has great nature and landscape backgrounds, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try it out. The photo above was taken in Iceland, so I chose another scene from the same country in the Remove.bg app. Here’s how it went:

It was certainly better than my first attempt with Remove.bg, but two notable details reveal that this photo has been edited. First, you can see the sunlight reflecting on my bag; it is cloudy in the second photo, because it would not be possible. Also, the cutout of me is quite blurred; considering that the foreground is sharp, it would be difficult to convince someone that the picture is not edited with AI.

Picsart has many useful toolsincluding background removal and a host of others powered by AI. For this experiment, I used this picture:

Since I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, it made sense to use a sunny background. Since the photo is a close-up of me, I also needed to think about the background if I didn’t want this to look like an obvious AI picture. I tested the background on a sunny beach, and this was the final result:

It still looks obviously AI, in my opinion, but it’s not a bad effort. I like how the tool has toned down the lighting to make everything look more consistent, because it wouldn’t make sense to have a lot of light on my back if the photo was taken in the shadows.

For my next (and final) background replacement attempt, I used this picture:

This was a more interesting experiment because I already have some kind of landscape that I can work with from the original. However, people are all dressed in outerwear – and it’s clearly not sunny. So, I needed to be tactical with what I chose. Well, that’s what I thought initially… in the end, I decided to be creative and generate a photo of the three people walking on the cafe with the blue sky in the background.

Interestingly, the photo was more blurry than the first one I took. The people were placed quite well, but of course, I should have chosen a background that represents the original conditions.

This was an interesting experiment, and I learned a lot about how AI background replacement works. I would say that Adobe Express was the best tool I tried, but I liked how you can be more creative with Picsart. I don’t use these features for my photos when I post them, but it was still fun to be creative.