New Remove Background options in PowerPoint

Microsoft is actively working to make the user interface and features of PowerPoint easier to use. This is good news!

One new feature is the Edit Picture dialog box.

With a selected image, you get to it by clicking the Picture Format tab and then choosing the Edit Picture icon.

However, two of the features in the Edit Picture dialog box have their own icons: Remove Background and Erase.

Here is the full Edit Picture dialog box…

In this post, I’ll focus on Remove Background, but the Edit Picture dialog box contains the following features:

• Erase: Brush over the area you want to remove, or draw a box around the object you want to edit. Click the Erase button to apply the removal. Then click Save or Cancel. (You can undo changes with Undo.)
• Upscale: Click Upscale and let it work. It will give you a comparison of the before and after. Click Accept if you like the results. Then click Save.
• Edit object: This lets you erase, move, or cut out parts of the images. You can click to select “objects,” which are logical sections of the image, or use the brush to draw over sections you want to select.
• Background: This automates removing the background but gives you some control. I’ll cover this in more detail below.
• Effects: This option lets you choose from a set of effects. You can also auto-enhance the image.
• Text: Lets you add text in various styles and move it wherever you want on the image.
• Crop: This is a standard crop feature.

More automation for removing a background

The Remove Background feature in the Edit Picture dialog box is an AI-assisted feature. The old Remove Background feature is still available if you want more manual control or if you don’t have AI (Copilot) available. The main advantage is that it takes a shot at automating the background removal.

It does a pretty good job. It chooses what it thinks is the main point of the image and gets rid of the rest.

Here’s an example:

Look at her hair on the right side of the image. That type of accuracy is hard to get with hair.

On the other hand, there’s a slight artifact on her pants on the right. It isn’t perfect.

Getting finer control

But sometimes you want more control, so you have that, too.

1. Choose Remove to start the process.
2. After you remove the background, there’s an Adjust button. Click that and you can use either Select or Brush to adjust what you want to keep or remove, similar to the old Background Removal tool.
3. Then click Update.
4. Finally click Save to save the changes and return to your slide.

Here you see an example with some adjustments.

I’m not confident that the new tool gives you as accurate control as the old one. You may have to try multiple times to get what you want (but that was true with the old tool, too).

Do you have it?

This feature is rolling out to PowerPoint for the web users and is available to users running:

• Windows: Version 2510 (Build 19422.20000) or later.
• Mac: Version 16.104 (Build 25121423) or later.

Features will roll out over time as Microsoft monitors quality and performance, so some preview features may not be available to you right away. Also note that features may be paused, adjusted, or removed as part of that process. I’ve already seen some changes (improvements).

What do you think?

Let me know in the comments what you think of the new changes, especially the Remove Background feature.