Wish you could erase the background in an image? With a bit of tinkering, in MS Paint you can. Find out here how to make the background transparent in Paint.
First, Kick-Off Southern Hemisphere
On the southern outskirts of the Brazilian city of Macapá, not too far from the mighty Amazon basin and right next to the software engineering school of UNIFAP is a soccer stadium like no other:
Estádio Milton de Souza Corrêa has two halfway lines.
There’s the one white line you can see, of course; and there’s the line that gives the stadium its common name, Zerão. For the stadium is aligned precisely north-to-south, and smack through the middle line goes the equator.
So, any time a game is on at Zerão, a Southern Hemisphere team plays one from the Northern Hemisphere.
Now, the middle line makes visible a “line” that is usually seen; want to do the opposite in Paint and make something—say, the background—transparent?
How to Make the Background Transparent in Paint
Using Automatic Background Removal in Paint
To take advantage of content recognition built into Paint starting with version 11.2306, you can quickly make the background transparent (provided Paint shares your idea of the background):
- Open the image in MS Paint.
- Select Remove background in the Image section in the toolbar.
Paint picked the wrong subject: If Paint removed parts of what you consider the foreground or did not catch all the background, you can try cropping the image first to mostly comprise the subject; see below for selecting.
- Now select File | Save as | PNG picture to save the image directly wit the background set to translucent.
Using Manual Selection to Make the Background Transparent
Paint is not the best tool for images with transparent background—but, with a little help from an online tool, you can make it work.
A little easier: How to Make the Background Transparent in Paint 3D
Time needed: 7 minutes
To make the background transparent in an image using MS Paint:
- Click Color 2 in the Paint toolbar.
- Set Color 2 in the toolbar to one you do not otherwise use in the image.
New color: Click Edit colors to pick a color not yet found in Colors.
Important: The color needs to be radically different from the edges of the image foreground you are setting free, or the transparent background will bleed into the image content. - Select the Eraser tool.
- Paint over the background with the eraser tool.
What this does: This replaces it with the background color (Color 2).
Paint bucket: You can also pick the Bucket tool and right-click to erase an entire area. You can
1. select the foreground with free-form selection,
2. invert the selection and then
3. fill the selection, for instance.
The best way: Fill the entire background with Color 2 before you start craeting.
Alternative: You can also set Color 1 to your background color, of course, and use a brush to paint the background color in.
- Select File | Save as | PNG picture from the menu.
- Save the image to any folder on disk.
- Open make PNG Transparent on Online PNG Tools in a browser.
- Drag and drop the PNG file you just saved in Paint over png.
- Click the palette under Transparency Color to pick or enter the background color’s RGB or Hex code.
- Optional: choose a threshold for matching colors for transparency.
Try 10%: The default of 30% may be a bit lenient; try a lower value such as 10%.
- Click Save as… under transparent png.
- Now click Download to download a copy of your image with background made transparent.
Use the Paint Bucket to Fill in the Background in Paint
To use the paint bucket to fill the background with a single color quickly in MS Paint:
- Select the foreground you want to keep using the free-form selection tool.
- Invert the selection.
Here’s how: Select Invert selection from the selection drop-down menu in the toolbar - Fill the selection.
Here’s how: Click Fill in the Tools section, then click inside the selected background.
Content-aware bucket: Note that filling may work differently depending on the version of Paint; in recent versions, it will fill adjacent pixels with the same color value—which, of course, you can also use to fill the background.
How to Make Background Transparent in Paint: FAQ
Can I use a different tool to make the background I erased in Paint transparent?
Yes, of course.
There are countless tools you can use, both installable and browser-based. You can try any of the following, for instance:
- Online Image Tools’ Transparent Image Creator (on the web) and
- Transparent PNG Generator (a Windows app).
(How to make background transparent tested with Paint for Windows 10 Version 21H1 and Paint 11.2302–11.2311; updated January 2024)