Procreate has no single "remove background" button, so you clear a background by selecting it and deleting it. Open the Selection tool (the S icon), choose Automatic, tap the background, and drag to set the threshold. Then tap Cut, or scrub three fingers left and right on the canvas to clear. Hide the background color layer to confirm the result, then export as PNG to keep the transparency. For irregular subjects, trace the subject with Freehand, tap Invert, and clear the outside area.

Before you start: set up your layers

Procreate's transparency depends on layers, so a little setup avoids most of the common failures.

1. Duplicate the image layer. Duplicate it, then hide the original. If a selection goes wrong, you still have clean source pixels.
2. Hide the Background color layer. The white or colored layer at the bottom of the stack is a separate layer. If it stays visible, a cleared area looks like it did nothing. Transparent pixels show as a gray grid once it's hidden.
3. Select the layer you want to edit. Clear, Cut, and the erasing gestures only affect the active layer. Most "it deleted nothing" or "it deleted everything" problems are caused by the wrong layer being active.
4. Check your canvas size. If the file is headed for print or a high-resolution composite, set the canvas to the final dimensions before importing. Resizing a cleared cutout afterward resamples the edges.

Method 1: Automatic Selection (best for white or flat backgrounds)

Use this when the background is a uniform color, such as a scanned sketch on white paper, a flat-color illustration, or a product shot on a seamless backdrop.

1. Tap the Selection tool (S icon) in the top bar.
2. In the bottom toolbar, choose Automatic and make sure Add mode is active.
3. Tap the background area in your image.
4. Keep your Apple Pencil or finger down and drag left or right. This adjusts the selection threshold, which controls how similar a color must be to the one you tapped to be included.
5. Release when the selection covers most of the background without creeping into the subject.
6. Tap Cut, or scrub three fingers left and right on the canvas to clear the selection. The Layer Options menu also offers Clear.
7. Hide the lower layers to check the result.

Cut and Clear both remove the selected pixels from the active layer. If you tap Clear and the whole image disappears, the selection probably didn't register, or the wrong layer was active. Re-enter the Selection tool and confirm that the marching-ants outline surrounds only the background.

You don't need a perfect pass. Remove most of the background, then clean up the remainder with the eraser. It's usually faster than nudging the threshold repeatedly.

Where Automatic Selection struggles

• Textured backgrounds. Watercolor washes, paper grain, and photographic noise vary pixel to pixel, so the threshold either leaves speckles or eats into the subject.
• Subjects that share colors with the background. White fur on a white backdrop, or a pale highlight on a light wall, will get selected along with the background.
• Soft edges. Hair, smoke, and motion blur have partially transparent pixels that a hard-edged selection can't reproduce cleanly.

In those cases, switch to a manual method.

Method 2: Freehand selection, Invert, and clear

When the background isn't uniform, trace the part you want to keep instead.

1. Open the Selection tool and choose Freehand, with Add active.
2. Zoom in and trace around the subject. Use Ellipse or Rectangle for geometric shapes and Freehand for organic ones.
3. Close the loop. You can also leave a small gap between the start and end points, and Procreate will fill the selection.
4. If you slip, tap with two fingers to undo the last step and keep going.
5. Tap Invert so that the background is now selected instead of the subject.
6. Clear the selection with Cut or the three-finger gesture.

Be careful with the small color dot at the end of a Freehand selection. Tapping it fills the selection with color. If your subject suddenly turns solid black or white, undo with a two-finger tap and finish the selection by closing the loop instead.

Zoom in and use short, deliberate segments for tight edges. Trace slightly inside the subject's outline rather than outside it. A tiny inset hides background fringing, which is harder to fix than a slightly tight edge.

Method 3: Mask the background instead of deleting it

If you might change your mind, don't delete pixels at all. A layer mask hides the background while keeping the original image underneath.

1. Make a Freehand or Automatic selection of the subject you want to keep.
2. Open the Layers panel, tap the layer thumbnail, and choose Mask.
3. Procreate applies a mask so that only the selected area is visible.
4. Paint on the mask with black to hide more and white to bring areas back.

This is the closest Procreate comes to non-destructive editing, and it suits edge refinement. You can soften a hard cut with a textured brush on the mask or restore an area you removed too aggressively. When you're satisfied and want a single raster layer, merge the mask into the layer, or leave it as it is if you're exporting a layered file.

Clean up edges and leftover specks

Whichever method you use, expect some cleanup.

• Stray specks. Switch to the Eraser with a hard brush and remove leftover dots, especially in corners and between shapes.
• Halos. A light fringe around a dark subject comes from the old background bleeding into edge pixels. Re-select the subject, shrink the selection by feathering or retracing slightly inside it, and delete the outer ring.
• Rough edges. Zoom in and check along the whole outline. Jagged edges that look fine at fit-to-screen show up immediately in a composite.
• Stickers and outlines. To isolate one element from a sheet, use Freehand to draw loosely around it, then copy and paste it onto its own layer. Hide the source layer, and add an outline on a layer beneath.

Export with the transparency intact

Clearing the background only matters if the file keeps its alpha channel.

• PNG preserves transparency without quality loss. Open Actions → Share and choose PNG.
• PSD keeps your layers and masks if you plan to refine the cutout elsewhere.
• JPEG has no alpha channel, so transparent areas fill with a solid color. Avoid it for cutouts.

If your PNG arrives as a JPEG, the problem is usually the delivery route rather than the export. Email clients can be the cause. Save to your camera roll or Dropbox first and confirm the extension. Another culprit is iOS's Optimise iPad Storage setting for Photos, which can swap full-quality files for lower-quality versions when storage runs low. Check that setting if images arrive degraded.

Troubleshooting common problems

Where Procreate stops and a motion pipeline starts

Procreate suits stills such as illustrated elements, hand-drawn textures, and sticker-style assets you'll drop into a composition. Its selection-based approach has limits for production work:

• It works on one image at a time, so a shot with hundreds of frames isn't practical.
• Edge quality depends on manual tracing, which won't survive frame-to-frame variation in moving footage.
• There's no built-in way to carry a mask across a sequence.

For motion work, a common pattern is to clean up and paint assets in Procreate, export PNG or PSD, and bring them into After Effects, Nuke, or Blender for animation and compositing. Keep the original layers when you can. A layered PSD lets you re-cut or restyle later without re-tracing.

Quick recap

1. Duplicate the layer and hide the Background color layer.
2. Use Automatic Selection for flat or white backgrounds. Tap the background, drag to tune the threshold, then Cut.
3. Use Freehand plus Invert for complex or textured subjects.
4. Use a layer mask if you want to keep the original pixels.
5. Erase leftover specks, check edges at high zoom, and export as PNG or PSD.

Once you know the layer and selection habits, clearing a background in Procreate takes a couple of minutes. The result is only as clean as your source image and the edges you check at the end.

Procreate has no single "remove background" button, so you clear a background by selecting it and deleting it. Open the Selection tool (the S icon), choose Automatic, tap the background, and drag to set the threshold. Then tap Cut, or scrub three fingers left and right on the canvas to clear. Hide the background color layer to confirm the result, then export as PNG to keep the transparency. For irregular subjects, trace the subject with Freehand, tap Invert, and clear the outside area.

Before you start: set up your layers

Procreate's transparency depends on layers, so a little setup avoids most of the common failures.

1. Duplicate the image layer. Duplicate it, then hide the original. If a selection goes wrong, you still have clean source pixels.
2. Hide the Background color layer. The white or colored layer at the bottom of the stack is a separate layer. If it stays visible, a cleared area looks like it did nothing. Transparent pixels show as a gray grid once it's hidden.
3. Select the layer you want to edit. Clear, Cut, and the erasing gestures only affect the active layer. Most "it deleted nothing" or "it deleted everything" problems are caused by the wrong layer being active.
4. Check your canvas size. If the file is headed for print or a high-resolution composite, set the canvas to the final dimensions before importing. Resizing a cleared cutout afterward resamples the edges.

Method 1: Automatic Selection (best for white or flat backgrounds)

Use this when the background is a uniform color, such as a scanned sketch on white paper, a flat-color illustration, or a product shot on a seamless backdrop.

1. Tap the Selection tool (S icon) in the top bar.
2. In the bottom toolbar, choose Automatic and make sure Add mode is active.
3. Tap the background area in your image.
4. Keep your Apple Pencil or finger down and drag left or right. This adjusts the selection threshold, which controls how similar a color must be to the one you tapped to be included.
5. Release when the selection covers most of the background without creeping into the subject.
6. Tap Cut, or scrub three fingers left and right on the canvas to clear the selection. The Layer Options menu also offers Clear.
7. Hide the lower layers to check the result.

Cut and Clear both remove the selected pixels from the active layer. If you tap Clear and the whole image disappears, the selection probably didn't register, or the wrong layer was active. Re-enter the Selection tool and confirm that the marching-ants outline surrounds only the background.

You don't need a perfect pass. Remove most of the background, then clean up the remainder with the eraser. It's usually faster than nudging the threshold repeatedly.

Where Automatic Selection struggles

• Textured backgrounds. Watercolor washes, paper grain, and photographic noise vary pixel to pixel, so the threshold either leaves speckles or eats into the subject.
• Subjects that share colors with the background. White fur on a white backdrop, or a pale highlight on a light wall, will get selected along with the background.
• Soft edges. Hair, smoke, and motion blur have partially transparent pixels that a hard-edged selection can't reproduce cleanly.

In those cases, switch to a manual method.

Method 2: Freehand selection, Invert, and clear

When the background isn't uniform, trace the part you want to keep instead.

1. Open the Selection tool and choose Freehand, with Add active.
2. Zoom in and trace around the subject. Use Ellipse or Rectangle for geometric shapes and Freehand for organic ones.
3. Close the loop. You can also leave a small gap between the start and end points, and Procreate will fill the selection.
4. If you slip, tap with two fingers to undo the last step and keep going.
5. Tap Invert so that the background is now selected instead of the subject.
6. Clear the selection with Cut or the three-finger gesture.

Be careful with the small color dot at the end of a Freehand selection. Tapping it fills the selection with color. If your subject suddenly turns solid black or white, undo with a two-finger tap and finish the selection by closing the loop instead.

Zoom in and use short, deliberate segments for tight edges. Trace slightly inside the subject's outline rather than outside it. A tiny inset hides background fringing, which is harder to fix than a slightly tight edge.

Method 3: Mask the background instead of deleting it

If you might change your mind, don't delete pixels at all. A layer mask hides the background while keeping the original image underneath.

1. Make a Freehand or Automatic selection of the subject you want to keep.
2. Open the Layers panel, tap the layer thumbnail, and choose Mask.
3. Procreate applies a mask so that only the selected area is visible.
4. Paint on the mask with black to hide more and white to bring areas back.

This is the closest Procreate comes to non-destructive editing, and it suits edge refinement. You can soften a hard cut with a textured brush on the mask or restore an area you removed too aggressively. When you're satisfied and want a single raster layer, merge the mask into the layer, or leave it as it is if you're exporting a layered file.

Clean up edges and leftover specks

Whichever method you use, expect some cleanup.

• Stray specks. Switch to the Eraser with a hard brush and remove leftover dots, especially in corners and between shapes.
• Halos. A light fringe around a dark subject comes from the old background bleeding into edge pixels. Re-select the subject, shrink the selection by feathering or retracing slightly inside it, and delete the outer ring.
• Rough edges. Zoom in and check along the whole outline. Jagged edges that look fine at fit-to-screen show up immediately in a composite.
• Stickers and outlines. To isolate one element from a sheet, use Freehand to draw loosely around it, then copy and paste it onto its own layer. Hide the source layer, and add an outline on a layer beneath.

Export with the transparency intact

Clearing the background only matters if the file keeps its alpha channel.

• PNG preserves transparency without quality loss. Open Actions → Share and choose PNG.
• PSD keeps your layers and masks if you plan to refine the cutout elsewhere.
• JPEG has no alpha channel, so transparent areas fill with a solid color. Avoid it for cutouts.

If your PNG arrives as a JPEG, the problem is usually the delivery route rather than the export. Email clients can be the cause. Save to your camera roll or Dropbox first and confirm the extension. Another culprit is iOS's Optimise iPad Storage setting for Photos, which can swap full-quality files for lower-quality versions when storage runs low. Check that setting if images arrive degraded.

Troubleshooting common problems

Where Procreate stops and a motion pipeline starts

Procreate suits stills such as illustrated elements, hand-drawn textures, and sticker-style assets you'll drop into a composition. Its selection-based approach has limits for production work:

• It works on one image at a time, so a shot with hundreds of frames isn't practical.
• Edge quality depends on manual tracing, which won't survive frame-to-frame variation in moving footage.
• There's no built-in way to carry a mask across a sequence.

For motion work, a common pattern is to clean up and paint assets in Procreate, export PNG or PSD, and bring them into After Effects, Nuke, or Blender for animation and compositing. Keep the original layers when you can. A layered PSD lets you re-cut or restyle later without re-tracing.

Quick recap

1. Duplicate the layer and hide the Background color layer.
2. Use Automatic Selection for flat or white backgrounds. Tap the background, drag to tune the threshold, then Cut.
3. Use Freehand plus Invert for complex or textured subjects.
4. Use a layer mask if you want to keep the original pixels.
5. Erase leftover specks, check edges at high zoom, and export as PNG or PSD.

Once you know the layer and selection habits, clearing a background in Procreate takes a couple of minutes. The result is only as clean as your source image and the edges you check at the end.