How to change a photo's background colour
- Choose a photo of a person, ideally head and shoulders against a plain wall.
- The first time, the AI model loads (about 12 MB); then the person is found in a second or two.
- Pick the background: white, off-white, light grey, light blue, blue, red, or any other colour.
- Check the edge around the hair. Trim it or make it softer if needed, then download as JPG or PNG.
- For a passport-size print or an exact size in KB, press Passport photo under Next step: the passport photo maker opens with your new photo.
How it works
Google's MediaPipe selfie segmenter, a small AI model made for people (Apache 2.0 licence), gives every pixel a chance of being part of the person. The tool turns that into a clean edge, then paints everything else in your colour. Soft edge pixels are a mix of you and the old background, so the old colour is first taken out of them: otherwise a halo of the old wall would show around the hair.
Example: a pixel at the edge of a sleeve was half the person (100, 60, 40) and half a green wall (40, 160, 60), so the camera saw (70, 110, 50). Put on white with the green taken out, it becomes (177, 157, 147), half sleeve and half white. Without that step it would be (162, 182, 152): still greenish, a visible fringe.
What background do passports and visas ask for?
From the official rules in our passport photo maker, checked on 2 October 2026:
| Photo for | Background |
|---|---|
| US passport | plain white or off-white |
| US visa (DS-160, DV lottery) | plain white or off-white |
| US green card (USCIS) | white to off-white |
| UK passport | plain cream or light grey (printed); plain light-coloured (digital) |
| India passport | plain white |
| OCI card (India) | plain light colour, not white |
| India e-Visa | plain light-coloured or white |
| Canada passport | plain white or light-coloured |
| Australia passport | plain white or light grey |
| Schengen visa | white or off-white |
| China visa | white or close to white |
| Ireland passport | plain light grey, white or cream |
| New Zealand passport (online) | plain and light, not white |
| Singapore passport | plain white (light grey if your hair is white) |
| UAE passport and Emirates ID | white |
| Nigeria passport (online upload) | white |
| Japan visa | plain white |
| Saudi Arabia eVisa | white, no pattern or shadows |
Several of these offices don't accept photos edited by software, so read the rules for your application in the passport photo maker before you use an edited photo. Related: blur the background instead, with the same on-device model.