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Cut a subject out of a green-screen still — chroma key, in your browser

Drop in a still photo shot against a green or blue chroma-key backdrop and the editor returns a clean transparent PNG with the chroma color removed and edge spill neutralised. Built for content creators, OBS overlay producers, course-video thumbnails, and anyone who shot against a green screen and now needs the still as a transparent overlay.

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Why a chroma-key-tuned cutout beats a generic background remover

1

Removes the green color cast from edge pixels

The hardest part of green-screen removal isn't deleting the bulk green backdrop — that's easy. It's neutralising the green color cast that bounces off the backdrop onto the subject's hair, shoulders, and skin (called 'spill' in the chroma-key world). The cutout pipeline shifts spill-affected edge pixels back toward neutral so your subject doesn't keep a green halo when composited onto a different backdrop.

2

Works for both green and blue chroma backdrops

The traditional green-screen color is roughly RGB (0, 177, 64) — chosen because it's far from human skin tones. Blue screens (around RGB 0, 71, 187) are still used in some setups, particularly when the subject is wearing green clothing or has greenish-yellow hair tones. The cutout pipeline works on both common chroma colors without needing manual color sampling.

3

Outputs at video-keyframe-ready resolution

The export preserves your input resolution — a 1920×1080 still stays 1920×1080 as a transparent PNG ready to drop into Premiere, Final Cut, DaVinci Resolve, or OBS Studio as an overlay. A 4K still stays 4K. No upscale, no downscale, no quality loss in the chroma-key pass.

How to chroma-key a still photo

1

Upload the green-screen still

JPG, PNG, WebP, or HEIC accepted. The cutout works best when the green/blue backdrop fills most of the frame and the subject is well-lit (no deep shadows that read as the same value as the backdrop). Phone shots from a portable green-screen pop-up work fine for OBS overlays and YouTube thumbnails; studio chroma setups produce cleaner edges.

2

Inspect the chroma-keyed preview

The transparency checkerboard shows exactly where the chroma color was removed. Zoom to 200-300% and check edges — particularly hair detail (chroma key's traditional weak point), translucent fabrics, and any motion blur on the original capture. The brush tool restores anything the chroma pass over-removed.

3

Download the transparent PNG for your video pipeline

Save the PNG-24 with full alpha channel and drop it into your editor's overlay track, OBS scene as an Image source, or PowerPoint/Keynote slide as a transparent layer. The same export works as a thumbnail base, a course-video intro graphic, or a static social-share asset.

Where green-screen still cutout earns its keep

OBS Studio overlays for streaming

Twitch streamers and YouTube creators who shoot a quick green-screen still of themselves (for a webcam border, a holding card, a 'stream starting soon' overlay) need a transparent PNG to layer over the live game capture. The cutout here turns the green-screen still into the OBS Image source asset directly.

Course-video thumbnails and YouTube hero graphics

Online-course creators (Teachable, Thinkific, Skillshare, Udemy) and YouTube tutorial creators routinely shoot themselves against a green screen for the course-card thumbnail and the video hero. The cutout produces the transparent-PNG layer that drops onto a brand-colored backdrop, the course title strip, or the tutorial-topic visual without a visible green box.

Conference and webinar speaker portraits

Conference organisers and webinar producers commonly request speaker headshots against a green or blue backdrop so the event branding can be composited behind. The cutout turns the speaker's chroma-screen still into a clean transparent PNG ready for the event's brand-color treatment without re-shooting against the actual backdrop.

Product demos and explainer-video stills

SaaS demo videos and explainer-animation projects often need static product-shot stills with the green/blue backdrop already removed for use as in-video overlays, tooltip illustrations, or paused-frame call-out graphics. The cutout produces the transparent overlay layer the animation pipeline expects.

Chroma keying for stills, in plain English

Chroma keying is the technique broadcast television invented in the 1940s for the weather-forecast cutout — shoot the subject against a uniformly-colored backdrop (originally blue, today usually green because modern digital sensors are more sensitive to the green channel), then in post replace every pixel of that color with transparency. Video editors do it as a real-time effect in Premiere, Final Cut, DaVinci Resolve, OBS Studio, and every other major NLE — but those workflows are tuned for video frames, not for still-image exports. When you only need ONE chroma-keyed frame (a thumbnail, an OBS overlay, a slide-deck portrait, a webinar speaker card), spinning up an NLE to render a single still feels like overkill — and most NLE chroma-key effects don't have a built-in 'export this single frame as a transparent PNG' shortcut anyway.

This editor exists for the still-frame case specifically. The cutout pipeline runs in-browser ONNX/WASM segmentation tuned to handle chroma-screen edges (spill removal, despill on hair detail, edge-color neutralisation) and writes the result as a true PNG-24 with 8-bit alpha — the universal transparent-image format every downstream tool expects. The output drops cleanly into OBS Studio as an Image source, into Premiere/Final Cut/Resolve as a transparent overlay layer, into PowerPoint/Keynote/Google Slides as a slide-deck portrait, into Photoshop or Affinity Photo as a layer for compositing, into Figma or Sketch for thumbnail mockups. Same format every existing pipeline already reads correctly. No video render, no NLE timeline, no proprietary export setting — just upload the chroma-screen still and download the transparent PNG.

Why a free still-frame chroma key beats spinning up an NLE

The competitive landscape for still-frame chroma keying is uneven and somewhat absurd. DaVinci Resolve (free, professional-grade NLE) does chroma keying excellently but only as part of a video timeline; exporting a single still as a transparent PNG requires a multi-step workflow most casual users won't navigate. Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro have similar friction at $22.99/mo and $299 lifetime respectively. Photoshop has a Color Range tool that can do basic chroma keying (no despill) and costs $22.99/mo Photography plan. The dedicated still-frame chroma-key tools online are mostly thin wrappers around generic background removers that don't even know to look for the chroma color, so they treat the green backdrop as one of N possible backdrops and miss the spill-removal step entirely. This editor delivers proper chroma-key spill removal at $0 — same edge quality the NLE pipelines deliver, no NLE timeline required. The license at /commercial-use-background-remover/ permits commercial streaming and course-content use; the privacy architecture at /private-background-remover/ keeps unreleased course-video stills entirely in your browser during processing.

Green-screen / chroma-key FAQ

Does this work for video, or only stills?
Stills only on this page — the editor processes one image at a time and exports a transparent PNG. For full video chroma keying you want a video editor with a real-time chroma-key effect: DaVinci Resolve (free, professional-grade), Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, or OBS Studio for live broadcasting. The output from this still-frame tool is useful AS A LAYER inside those video tools (overlay, lower-third graphic, paused-frame element) — but the actual video chroma-key pass needs a frame-by-frame video tool.
Why does my hair look greenish around the edges after cutout?
That's chroma spill — the green color from the backdrop bounced off your subject and tinted the edge pixels of hair and skin. The cutout pipeline here applies a despill pass that neutralises the worst of it, but very heavy spill (poorly-lit green screen, light-colored hair, translucent fabrics) can still leave a faint green tint. If you see noticeable green tint on the cutout, switch to the brush tool and clean it up before download. For maximum spill removal at the source: when shooting, light the subject and the backdrop separately so the subject doesn't have green light hitting them directly.
Will this work if I shot against a blue screen instead of green?
Yes. The cutout pipeline detects the dominant chroma color in the source frame — green at roughly RGB (0, 177, 64) or blue at roughly RGB (0, 71, 187) — and applies the chroma-key pass against the right one. Blue screens are still used in productions where the subject is wearing green clothing (which would key out against a green backdrop) or where green color tones in the subject's hair or skin would create unwanted alpha holes. The despill pass adapts to the chroma color present in the frame.

Open the chroma-key editor

Free, no signup, no watermark. Transparent PNG output with edge spill neutralised — ready to drop into your video pipeline.

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Quick reference: Cut a subject out of a green-screen still — chroma key, in your browser