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

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

A photo taken on an overcast day in a city

Since this picture was taken on an overcast day, I was curious to change the sky to something brighter. I didn’t know how this would work because the person in the picture is wearing clothes clearly designed for cold weather, but nonetheless, I thought trying was worthwhile. As you can tell from the result below, this… didn’t go to plan. The app took far too much of my background out of the picture.

I figured that I should use a picture with a very clear background instead. So, I tried again with Fotor using the picture below. As you can see, it’s very clear where the image background starts.

A background removed from an image in Fotor

Oddly enough, this was even harder to change than the first one. The app seemed to glitch every few seconds, meaning that I had to re-upload the picture three times. Nonetheless, the results were significantly better once I could edit the image. Fotor seems better at background replacement if the subject is nearby.

I had to think about the distance from the background, though, meaning that I was limited than I otherwise would’ve been with my background choices.

A photo of a portrait taken in a canyon

2Adobe Express

Since you cando many cool things with Adobe Express, and I use the app almost daily, it was a viable candidate for my next round of editing experimentation. Realizing that many AI background replacement tools work better 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 forRemove backgroundon the homepage. I then uploaded my image, after which Adobe Express gave me a list of options that I could choose for my picture. Below are some of my options; I could also segment based on the category I wanted.

An image created in Fotor with the background replaced

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 instead. Surprisingly, it worked really well. I can stilltell that the picture was modified with AI, but it’s certainly more realistic than many edits I’ve seen elsewhere.

Now that I had 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’s harder to distinguish the background; for this reason, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to see how the editor performed in more challenging scenarios.

A photo of a waterfall taken on a cloudy day

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

Nonetheless, I wanted to see if I could still salvage the situation. I triedChill Spotas this background includes mountains that are far away, even though it was a different season. And as you can see from my results below, it didn’t work. I would only use these tools for close-up pictures of people whenremoving the backgroundin the future.

3Remove.bg

I fine-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 ensured that my photos had a very clear subject; doing so allowed me to test these tools more fairly. Remove.bg was the next app I tried, and to kick off the next phase of my experiment, I used this picture:

I was clearly restricted in what I could choose for my background, since it needed to include water. However, most of my pictures so far were land-based, so I thought this was nonetheless worth trying. Remove.bg, as it goes, actually has quite a lot of water-oriented backgrounds—many of which include real-world destinations. I needed something expansive to fit the boat in, and below, you’ll see the end result.

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

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

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

It was certainly better than my first attempt with Remove.bg, but two noticeable details reveal that this photo has been edited. Firstly, you may see the sunlight reflecting off my bag; it’s cloudy in the second photo, so that would not be possible. Moreover, the cutout of me is quite blurry; considering that the foreground is sharp, it would be hard to convince someone that the picture wasn’t edited with AI.

Picsart has several useful tools, including background removal and a handful of other AI-powered ones. For this experiment, I used this picture:

Since I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, it made sense to use a sunny background. As 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 tried 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 toned down the lighting to make everything look more consistent, because it wouldn’t make sense to have lots of light on my back if the photo was taken in the shade.

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 I can work with the original. However, the people are all dressed in outdoor clothing—and it clearly isn’t sunny. So, I needed to be tactical with what I chose. Well, that’s what I initially thought… in the end, I decided to be creative and generate a picture of the three people walking on coffee with blue sky in the background.

Oddly enough, the picture was blurrier than the first one I took. The people were placed quite well, but of course, I should’ve chosen a background that represented 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 could be more creative with Picsart. I still wouldn’t use these features for my pictures when posting them, but it was fun to get creative nonetheless.