For years, Photoshop's Select and Mask was the gold standard for removing backgrounds. It still produces great results, but the tradeoff is time. Modern AI background removers produce "good enough" results in seconds with zero skill required. Which should you actually use? The answer depends on the job, and probably less than you think.
The test setup
To keep the comparison fair, we used the same five test images:
- A portrait with flyaway hair
- A fluffy dog on grass
- A product with a hard edge (a coffee mug)
- A product with transparency (a wine glass)
- A person on a cluttered urban street
We timed each approach from opening the file to exporting a transparent PNG.
Photoshop, experienced user
Steps:
- Open the file
- Use Select Subject to get an initial mask
- Refine in Select and Mask with the refine-edge brush
- Output to a layer mask
- Export PNG
Time per image for a skilled user: 2 to 5 minutes, longer for portraits with complex hair.
Quality: Very high. An expert can produce print-ready cutouts with perfectly tuned edges.
Photoshop, casual user
Same steps, but with less muscle memory and less intuition for Refine Edge:
- Time per image: 8 to 15 minutes
- Quality: Medium. Often has visible halos or flat hair.
Casual users tend to undershoot refinement and end up with awkward edges, or over-refine and eat into the subject.
AI background remover, any user
Steps:
- Drop the file into rmv.bg
- Wait for processing
- Download the PNG
Time per image: 5 to 15 seconds. Total.
Quality: High. For most cases, indistinguishable from skilled Photoshop work at normal viewing distance. Fine details on extreme edge cases (white hair on white background, wispy fur against a similar color) may be slightly softer.
Head to head on our five test images
- Portrait with flyaway hair. AI produced a cleaner result than the casual Photoshop user and a slightly softer result than the expert. Winner for most users: AI.
- Fluffy dog on grass. AI handled the fur edges surprisingly well. Casual Photoshop struggled the most. Winner: AI.
- Coffee mug. Both hit near-perfect cutouts. AI was faster. Winner: AI.
- Wine glass. Semi-transparent objects are the hardest case for AI. Expert Photoshop won by preserving the see-through body. Casual Photoshop lost on edge blending. Winner for print work: Photoshop. Winner for web: AI.
- Person on a cluttered street. AI correctly identified the subject and produced a clean cutout. Photoshop's Select Subject also worked well. Winner: AI, by time.
When to use each tool
Use AI when:
- You need a result in seconds
- You are producing images for web, social, or general marketing
- You are batch-processing many images
- You do not have time or skill to refine manually
Use Photoshop when:
- The image has semi-transparent elements (glass, smoke, ice)
- You are producing print-ready images with very tight quality control
- You need to preserve specific details the AI is missing
- You want full, pixel-level control
Use both when:
- Start with AI to get 90 percent of the cutout
- Import the result into Photoshop
- Refine the final 10 percent manually
- Export the polished version
The "both" workflow is increasingly popular among professionals. The AI does the heavy lifting fast, and the human refines the specific edges that need care.
Cost factors
Photoshop costs $20 to $60 per month as part of a Creative Cloud subscription. AI background removers like rmv.bg have generous free tiers and often only charge for very high volume.
For solo users and small teams, AI tools alone are almost always the right economic choice. For studios already running Photoshop, the AI complement is essentially free time.
The honest answer
For 90 percent of users, AI is faster, nearly as good, and costs less. The remaining 10 percent of cases where Photoshop still wins are specialized (glass, print, forensic work). If your goal is to remove a background and move on, an AI tool like rmv.bg is the obvious starting point. Try the same image in both and judge the quality yourself; in most cases, you will be surprised at how close the AI gets.