Removing background from GenAI art

Generative AI created art from tools like Midjourney is quite fun for creating unique images. However, the background is typically at best a solid color.

This post is a quick but useful tip for removing the background from GenAI art. I’ll use the always helpful magick package.

library(magick)

raw_img <- image_read("howard-robot-goggles.png")

raw_img |> image_resize("400x")

library(magick)

make_transparent <- function(path, fuzz = 10){

  name <- fs::path_ext_remove(path)

  logo <- image_read(path)

  out_logo <- logo |>
    image_fill(
      color = "transparent",
      fuzz = fuzz,
      point = "+1+1"
    ) 
  
  image_write(out_logo, paste0(name, "_transparent.png"))
  
  return(image_resize(out_logo, "400x"))

}

Then we can actually apply the make_transparent() function on the image.

make_transparent("howard-robot-goggles.png")