Hello and welcome to Craft with Sarah.
In this video I'm going to be testing out Cricut Design Space's brand new
background removal feature.
This is a brand new feature which has been introduced in October 2021, and I'm
excited to give it a try and see how it works. For the first part of this video I'm going to show
you how to use the ‘Remove Background’ tool, and then I'm going to take three separate photographs,
all with a different level of complexity, and then compare the ‘Remove Background’ tool in Design
Space to two other leading background removal tools, and we'll see which one performs best.
Let's jump in and take a look at Cricut Design Space.
Now, this feature is only available on the desktop version of Design Space, so not on the mobile or
the tablet version and also it's only available if you pay for the Cricut Access subscription.
If you don't pay for it then you won't be able to use the
‘Removed Background’ tool in your projects.
To see the ‘Remove Background’ feature you need quicker Design Space 6.14 or higher.
Even if you do have that version, you still might not yet be able to see the ‘Remove Background’
tool, as it is being dripped out slowly, so even if you've got the latest version,
it might still take a little while for you to get access to the tool.
But don't worry, it will be with you very soon.
Let's see how it works, so I'm going to go into upload and then upload image.
I've got a photograph which I'm going to remove the background of,
so let's click and drag that in, and I'm doing quite an easy one so the background is all
kind of white and a little bit of gray around the edge of this french bulldog,
because this is a photo I want to choose complex and then continue.
Now, if you've used an older version of Design Space, you'll notice that this screen now looks
quite different to how it did before we've got this ‘Background Remover’ feature over
on the left, and then it says automatic quick and easy way to remove background some images,
and then to remove the background, you simply click ‘remove background’,
and it will go ahead and think about it for a while and then take the background out.
It can spin for quite a while. That was actually pretty quick. Normally it takes longer than that,
but you can see that's done a really really nice job of cutting out the image.
If I zoom in a little bit you can see it's got really smooth edges to that french bulldog
and around the edge of the pillow, so that's done a brilliant job with this particular.
If you wanted to turn this into a cut image, you can check how it's going to look
by clicking the preview cut image on the top right
and this is just going to cut the outside, so it would just be the silhouette, so you know I can't
see any of the details inside my french bulldog, it will just show the, um, the outer edge.
So, what this is probably going to be best for is doing print and cut images,
so let's just choose hide cut image again so I can see my picture.
If I would have used my original as a print, then cut it would have just cut
around the edge of that rectangle, but now if I print then cut this,
it's going to cut out the french bulldog and the pillow, and that'll be really nice to go
on a greetings card, or maybe even to be turned into a sticker or a fridge magnet.
Let's take a look at some of these other options on the left hand side.
If you want to undo the background removal, you can click ‘revert’,
and then it will put it back on again.
You've got the magic wand tool and the eraser tool
and these have always been present on Design Space when you upload a photo.
There's also this new one called restore. I will show you some of the other tools.
So, with the magic wand you can click this and I'm just going to
put the background back because even if you don't have quicker access,
you can still use the select tool, the magic wand, and the eraser.
So if you don't have Cricut Access to get rid of the background, you can click on the magic wand
and then click into the background and it kind of does the same thing,
although it has left the shadow underneath the pillow.
It hasn't taken that out so I'd need to click into it again, and you see it's kind of taking
out similar colors, but if you wanted a smooth edge along that pillow, go to the eraser tool.
You can drag the size, and then just drag over,
and that will get rid of any other bits that you want to get rid of.
My restore tool is actually now showing up, so let's click on that and you see
that's pulling it back in, and it's also letting me bring the background back in.
It only shows up if you've actually used the magic wand tool or the eraser
and you can see it's just bringing that background back in where I'm clicking and dragging.
That's my background removed, so let's press apply and continue,
and then you can choose to save it as a cut image or print and cut.
I'm going to go print and cut, and then upload.
Depending on how big your image is, this might take a little while, as it's uploading the
file to the Cloud, and then it will show up on your recent uploads, so I'm going to click it,
go add to canvas, and there is my little french sheet with the background taken out,
and I have to make it smaller because it's going to be a print and cut,
and then let's zoom in, and now you can format this just like you would any other print and cut.
So if you're making stickers, you might want to add a white offset around the edge. There we go!
Change it to white and, of course, now you can't see it,
but then you'd select both of the layers and flatten them.
I'm just going to change my canvas color so you can see better. There we go! Okay, so now
this would make a lovely sticker and the Cricut is going to cut around the edge of the white.
That was a very very quick kind of go through on how you might make a sticker.
If you'd like a full length video on that, then drop me
a comment and I will send you a link to another video I've done on how to do that.
All right, so now we've had a look at how the Cricut tool performs,
let's compare it with some others.
Let's start with a blank page and I'm going to try a different image on Cricut,
so upload and then upload image.
The next image I'm trying is a little bit more complex. It'll
be harder for the Cricut to cut out,so I'm going to use one of my photographs
of my layered dogs and you see it's got this wooden background on it.
It's going to be tricky because the dog is kind of the same colors. It's all
browns in there, there's not an awful lot of distinction, so let's go complex and continue,
and then I'll press remove background, and we'll see how well this does
Oh dear, it didn't like that very much, so I thought this one was going to be difficult.
This has not done a very good job. Not only has it not removed the background,
but it's taken out some of the dog.
Now, I could fix this by going into the eraser tool and getting rid of all of these bits that
are on the outside, and then get the restore tool and put the color back into the bits of the dog,
but that's going to take me a really really long time, so what I'm going to do instead,
is have a look at some other remove background tools and see if they do any better.
The first is a website called ‘remove.bg’, and this is great because it is free, but with the
free versions there are limitations, which I'll go through in a moment.
Let's drag and drop that same photograph in and see what it does. So, as you can see,
this has done a much better job. It's taken out all of that wooden background,
and it's now showing as checkerboard, which means it's transparent.
Um, so that's exactly what we wanted,
and the dog has been cut out beautifully, there's no missing pieces on there.
Now you can click the picture and it will download a png version straight to your computer,
but this will be a very small image, so depending on what you want to do with it,
it might not be big enough to use, and that's the limitation I was talking about with ‘remove.bg’.
For example, if I wanted to print this to make stickers with,
or to put on a card or something like that, this png version is not going to be big enough.
However, if I was going to be doing something like converting my photograph to an SVG,
that would probably be big enough, and I'll go through how to do that in a separate video.
As for now, for this one I'm just focusing on removing the background.
If you wanted to download a higher quality version, then you can click download HD,
and then you have to get credits for it. So this is only you know it's optional,
you don't have to, but it does give a much higher quality file.
Click pricing at the top to see the credits, and you can either pay monthly, or if you're
only going to be using it occasionally, I'd recommend the pay as you go option,
and you can get 10 credits for eight pounds if you are outside the UK. Then it will probably
show it to you in your local currency, but that's only 80p per image if you've got 10 credits, and
you can use them whenever you want to, so that's a really affordable way of getting high quality
removed backgrounds on your photographs without having to pay a monthly subscription.
The other background removal tool I'll show you is ‘canva.com’. Canva is an online graphic design
software and it does have a remove background tool but it's only available with the paid
version of Canva, so there is a free version of Canva and that still has loads of functionality
if you want to get into graphic design, making social media graphics, making printables,
anything like that, then Canva is brilliant for that, and you can use the free version.
But if you want to remove backgrounds, then you need the paid one, and that's what I've got,
as I'm in the UK, it cost me £10.99 a month,
but again, if you're in a different country, it'll probably show the equivalent in your currency.
To remove the background from a photo, click create a design
and then edit photo, and that will open up a browser on
your computer so that you can find the photo you want to get rid of the background on.
I'm using the same one here that I've done in the other two tests, so let's go edit photo and
this is going to upload, so you see over here on the left you have this little wiggly blue button.
We need to wait for that to fill up before we can start making changes. So, it's still
uploading and now it's done, so now I can click on it, go edit image, and then click background
remover and that's going to wear away and take the background out, so let's see how this one does.
That's done a really great job as well, just like remove.bg, it's got
rid of all of that wooden background and just left me with my dog photo.
To download this with a transparent background, you would click on download and then make sure
you click transparent background, and then click download, and it will save it to your computer,
and this will be a high resolution high quality file, so as long as you uploaded
a good quality photo to begin with, it will give you a good quality photo back,
so that's why I prefer Canva over remove.bg, just because you can get that higher quality.
But again I am paying monthly for Canva. I do use it for other things, so for me it makes
sense to pay that monthly subscription, but if that doesn't make sense for you,
then using remove.bg for free or signing up for credits to get those higher quality versions
might work out a better cost way for you to do it.
Let's try again with another image. This time I've chosen a photograph of a girl jumping on the
beach, so this one is quite complex again because we've got the different colors in the background,
but she does stand out quite nicely from it so I'm
hoping that Design Space will do a little bit better on this one.
Let's click complex and then continue and then click remove background. That's actually done a
pretty good job, much better than last time, but there are a few places it's not quite perfect.
If I zoom in you can see all around the hair we've still got bits of the blue in there,
so if I was to click preview cut image, if I wanted this is silhouette it doesn't really
look as good as perhaps it could, and also the outline's quite jaggedy around the edge.
We could probably fix this with the magic wand tool by going into all of the blue.
It's not picking it up amazingly well though, so we might need to erase it.
The eraser tool doesn't go that small,
so you might find it quite tricky to get into all the details of the hair, but overall that
has done, you know, a pretty good job actually, definitely when comparing it to the last one.
Let's compare it to remove.bg. Next I'll drag in the same photograph,
and there that was quick, and that looks like it's done a pretty good job. It's hard to see
because I've only got this tiny preview, but the hair looks like it's been cut out much better.
It looks like every individual hair has actually had the blue sky removed from it,
so that is looking good, but what about Canva, I've uploaded the picture, so I can click it go
edit image and then background remover, and just like with remove.bg, that's done a great job.
If I zoom in, you can see the edges are much smoother than it was in Design Space, and if
we look at the hair that's perfectly cut it out, you can see each individual hair going on there,
so yep, that has done a better job alright, so, so far I'm giving the point to remove.bg and
Canva for both of those photos, and, sadly, Design Space is in third place at the moment.
I'm going to give it one more go though, on an illustration type image rather than a photo,
and fingers crossed.
Let's see how this goes. Drag my image in,
and, again, I'll choose complex and for this one I wanted to take out all of
the pink so that I could cut out the flowers and leaves from vinyl, so let's go continue.
This is quite a tricky image, again because the white and the pink are fairly similar,
and that looks from this like it's done an alright job, but when I click preview cut image,
you can see actually that doesn't really look like leaves and flowers at all. So,
again, that one has proved a little bit tricky for Design Space.
Here it is on remove.bg, and it looks like it's done a better job.
I can see some of these flowers a little bit easier, but again,
as this will be a low resolution download, if I was to click it, it's a bit hard to tell.
Let's try Canva 2, so edit image, and background remover. That looks amazing.
If I zoom in, you can see how well that's taken the pink out,
but it's left all of the green and the white.
Let's see how this actually looks when it's uploaded into Design Space as a car image,
so I'm going to go download, make sure it has a transparent background, and then click download.
Whilst that's downloading, I'm going to just continue this, save it as a cut image
so that we can see the difference, and I'll add that on my canvas.
Oh, wow! That's big! let's make it a bit smaller, so let's go 10 inches,
actually a bit smaller than that. Okay, so we're going to compare this to the
one that we've removed the background with in Canva, so let's go upload, and upload image,
drag in my one from Canva. I'm going to choose complex again and then continue.
I don't need to remove the background because it's already been removed,
so I can just click apply and continue. Before I do that, let's just go preview cut image,
and look at the difference in that quality, so apply and continue.
I'm going to save it as a cut image, upload it and then add this to my canvas.
This is huge again, so let's make it smaller that you can see the difference in that, so, this one
here I'll make it red. This is what it looked like when we used the remove background tool in Design
Space, and this is how it looks when we did it in Canva, so if we were to cut this out from vinyl,
it might be a bit tricky, because some of these flower stems are really thin, but you can tell
that it is flowers and leaves, unlike this one, which doesn't really look like it's supposed to.
So I'm afraid that's another point for Canva followed by remove.bg, followed by Design Space,
so that was my test of the new background removal tool in Cricut Design Space.
I am a little bit disappointed that the
new feature didn't do as well as it did in Canva or remove.bg. However,
it is a brand new feature, so there's bound to be some teething problems in the beginning
and I'm confident that Cricut will continue to innovate and improve it as time goes on.
I'm really excited that Cricut are introducing new features into Design Space, especially
things like background removal that a lot of people have been asking for for a long time,
and hopefully this is a sign that in the next coming months there will be lots of
new features that build on this, as well as improvements to how it's working now.
Generally though, I love Cricut Design Space. I think it's a really easy to use software. I use
it pretty much every day and I never normally have any problems with it. However, I know that
some people do struggle with it, especially how to use it to do more complex designs,
so if learning Cricut Design Space is something that you would like to know a little bit more
about, check out my other videos, as I have loads of Design Space tutorials in there,
or if there's something in particular that you'd really like to learn, drop me a comment below,
and let me know what it is, and maybe I will feature it in a future video.
But for now, thank you for watching, and I hope you enjoyed this video. Bye!