Red background photo maker
Put your portrait on a solid red background — the pas foto colour Indonesian applications ask for.
Drop your file here
Processed securely and deleted within the hour.
Where a red background is actually required
Almost every request for a red-background photograph comes from Indonesia. SSCASN and CPNS applications want a pas foto on a solid red background, saved as a JPG under 200 KB. SKCK — the police certificate — wants red as well. And for KTP-e, KIA and kartu kuning the required colour depends on your birth year, which is a rule that exists nowhere else in the world.
Red is the colour that exposes a bad cut-out
You can composite a rough cut-out onto white and it will look acceptable, because the pale fringe left around hair is close to white anyway. Do the same thing onto saturated red and it is immediately obvious: a grey-green halo appears around the head, and it is the old background still sitting inside the semi-transparent edge pixels.
That halo is arithmetic, not bad luck. An edge pixel is a mixture of you and whatever was behind you, and the mixture cannot be undone by simply painting red underneath. So before compositing, the old background colour is estimated from the pixels that are definitely background, and then subtracted out of every partly-transparent edge pixel to recover your own colour. Hair against red then reads as hair against red.
Getting under 200 KB
SSCASN rejects anything over 200 KB. Set the maximum here and the highest quality that fits is found automatically, so you do not have to guess with a slider or run the result through a second tool.
Red or blue?
Published guidance on Indonesian pas foto colours contradicts itself about which birth-year parity takes which colour, in both directions depending on which office wrote the page. Both are offered on this tool and neither is chosen for you. Read the instruction on the form you are filling in — that is the one that governs your application, and it is the only source worth trusting.
Take the photo well and this is easy
Face the camera squarely in even daylight against any plain-ish wall. The background does not need to be red, or even plain — that is the part being replaced. What matters is that you are clearly separated from it and in focus.
Common questions
Which colour does my document need?
Follow the instruction on the form you are filling in. White covers India, the UK, Schengen, the US and Australia; red and blue are Indonesian pas foto colours; sky blue is common in the Philippines and parts of the Gulf.
Is red or blue right for an Indonesian pas foto?
It depends on your birth year, and published sources contradict each other about which parity takes which colour. Both are offered here. Use whichever the form in front of you specifies.
Why does my hair look strange at the edges?
Leave the edge cleaning on — it removes the old background colour from the semi-transparent pixels around hair, which is what causes a halo against a strong colour. It is on by default.
Can I get the background transparent instead?
Yes, but use the background remover for that. This tool exists specifically to produce a solid colour, because that is what document portals require.
Will it work on a photo with a busy background?
Usually, but a plain wall gives a much better cut-out. Furniture, patterned curtains and other people in the frame are what confuses it.
Are my photos kept?
No. This one runs on our server because it uses a background-removal model, and each job runs in an isolated directory that is deleted as soon as your download is sent.