Aiarty Image Matting: This AI Tool Goes Beyond Simple Background Removal

Image background removal tools are a dime a dozen these days, and you can easily find free ones as well. In spite of this abundance, a random online tool or a built-in AI image editor does not always suffice. This is the case when you are involved in tasks like alpha matting or professional background removal.

Aiarty Image Matting, an AI-powered image matting suite, is an exception here, though. It claims to bring all the power of accurate and reliable image matting without requiring advanced-level expertise. The next time you want to remove the background of an image or do advanced alpha matting, this tool may be an option.

About Aiarty Image Matting

Aiarty Image Matting is an image manipulation software like Photoshop, Luminar, or GIMP. However, unlike these all-in-one suites, Aiarty Image Matting focuses on tasks like image matting, background removal, etc. More so, it uses powerful AI engines and algorithms to make the distinction between multiple layers of the image.

“Traditional free background removers often struggle with intricate details such as hair strands, shadows, or transparent elements, leaving users frustrated.

With Aiarty Image Matting, we’ve trained our AI models on over 320,000 diverse images, enabling our free image background remover to deliver unmatched precision and reliability – even in challenging scenarios.

Our goal is to make professional-grade image background removal accessible to everyone, regardless of technical expertise.”

— Gary Lee, Development Director at Aiarty

Aiarty Image Matting is not for those common instances when you need a fancy-style profile picture. On the other hand, the tool deals with images in such a way that your end products look as professional as possible. From graphic designers to photo editors, most professionals can benefit from what Aiarty Image Matting offers.

Core Features

• Use AI engines to remove the background from images and optimize the content for various purposes like portraits, e-commerce photography, product photography, and UI design.
• SOTA-class Alpha Matting for optimizing images and background for different contents like hair, fur, and animals, thanks to AI.
• Choose between multiple matting/background removal options for complex images, such as contrast and low-light scenarios.
• Built-in upscaling options to improve the quality of images to a new extent, and Aiarty Image Matting also offers multiple effects.
• A variety of customization tools, including eraser, brush, dodge, burn, alpha mask inversion, and AI-manual detection.

Tech Specs

• Windows 10+ or macOS 10.15+ (Apple Silicon supported)
• 8 GB RAM minimum; AI acceleration available for M1/M2/M3/M4 Macs.
• Input: JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, HEIC, WebP, AVIF, JFIF, JP2, plus RAW formats (CR2, NEF, ARW, RAF, etc.)
• Output: PNG (8/16-bit), JPG

Aiarty Image Matting Review (TheSweetBits Take)

We were really impressed by the claims that Aiarty Image Matting software makes. But we wanted to check how these claims translate into the real-world experience.

Therefore, we decided to use the software for background removal and alpha matting on some images that we came across. These included typical portrait photographs, e-commerce photographs, and product images that we had to hand-do as part of our work.

During the testing, we felt it important to test the multiple features and AI engines that Aiarty Image Matting offers. Therefore, in addition to trying the images built into the tool, we threw a few images that are not that common in typical datasets.

About Our Testing: All our testing was done on an M2 MacBook Air running the latest version of macOS Sequoia. We are dealing with 8GB of Unified Memory and 256GB of storage space. Though M2 is better than M1, it is not an AI-optimized chip like M3 or M4.

Setup & User Interface

Setup is simple: download, sign up, and you’re ready to go. The app is snappy and feels lightweight, even on an entry-level M2 chip. Once inside, the UI is clean and intuitive. You load an image, choose your preferred AI engine (SolidMat, AlphaMatting, AlphaStandard, etc.), and generate a matte.

• SolidMat works great for objects and products.
• AlphaStandard is better for human subjects.
• AlphaMatting (experimental) pushes the boundaries for tricky hair and soft transitions.

Depending on the action, you will have to download the AI model from Aiarty Image Matting. This process may take up to a few minutes, depending on your Internet connection. After the app downloads the engine, you need to wait for the interface before you can start editing/background removal/matting.

The UI offers side-by-side previews of your original and masked image, and you can toggle between matting types easily. No clutter, no confusion.

Most of the screen real estate is dedicated to the canvas, where you can see the full preview of an image. On the right side, you can see multiple editing options and the selection between AI engines. The bottom pane is where you can keep all the images and choose between them for easy access.

Our take: We must add that we were not really testing the app on a so-called AIPC. Sure, Apple’s M2 chips are somewhat optimized for AI-based tasks, but they don’t really compare to M3 or M4 chips. What we are saying here is that you can expect better performance if your Mac or PC has an AI-optimized processor.

Background Removal

We should first mention that Aiarty Image Matting does not offer a dedicated background removal tool for images. Instead, this feature is built into the image matting module.

The impressive part is that you can choose one of four AI engines from the developer. Though all four AI models are optimized for intelligent image matting, even the least powerful model can smoothly remove image backgrounds.

In our testing, we used all four AI models to remove backgrounds from images:

• The SolidMat engine works best for images of objects like clothing, phones, etc. It is ideal for e-commerce photography projects.
• The AlphaStandard model is great for images with multiple humans or other objects. We found it to be best for wedding photography or situations requiring selective transparency. It allows finer control when working with detailed elements.

Of course, you can use advanced editing and refinement tools with any engine. But if you just want quick background removal, any AI model will handle the task well right out of the box.

For what it’s worth, background removal tools are everywhere these days. However, if you prefer not to share photos with third parties or need better accuracy and performance, Aiarty Image Matting is the better choice.

Image Matting

Image matting is where you can witness its real potential. It has been built and optimized for professional-grade image matting needs, so it’s unsurprising that you get some great results from the tool. Let’s take a look at everything step by step.

When you open an image, you first need to choose the Image Matting AI options. Here, you can select one of the AI models as well as hardware preferences:

• CPU and GPU
• CPU
• All Units

The Edit subsection helps you enhance, rotate, flip, or crop the image as needed. Aiarty Image Matting also lets you pick one of the three AI Enhance models. You can even enhance and export an image without fully matting it. Here are some observations:

• The Real Photo v3 engine works great with complex photographs containing multiple elements.
• For product photographs, all three models worked well.
• The Enhancement level can be selected between x1 and x2.

We also liked how optimized the Area Select module is. Regardless of the AI model, Aiarty Image Matting distinguishes between Humans, Animals, and Inanimate Objects in a photograph. You will also find specific things like electronics.

This feature really shines when working with photos containing multiple subjects. The option to pick specific objects from an image is pretty awesome, if you ask us.

The refinement options also come in handy more often than we thought. For instance, Outline Emphasis is great when we need to prioritize sharp edges. Similarly, Smooth Processing worked great while matting portrait photographs as well as product images. The Balance Brightness feature also saved us a lot of time that we would otherwise spend in post-processing.

However, the most powerful tool when it comes to editing functionalities would be Mask Alpha. This option lets you control how shadows, midtones, and highlights appear on the photograph. If you have experience with the curve, you won’t have trouble optimizing an image you matted with Aiarty Image Matting. You will also appreciate the built-in effects, such as Feather, Blur, B&W, and Pixel.

Editing Options

Though the AI engines are great, you still need some touch-ups to refine everything. Fortunately, you get to use one of the many editing options, such as Eraser, Brush, Dodge, and Burn. You’d be familiar with all these tools if you have used something like Photoshop before.

Thanks to the simple UI design, using these tools is pretty easy. You can choose aspects like threshold, value, size, and hardness for each tool and optimize the final image before exporting. The workflow was quick and straightforward for the most part, and you can control how each tool behaves on the canvas.

Overall, while they are not comparable to those of Photoshop or Affinity Photo, the editing tools on Aiarty Image Matting do deliver.

Aiarty Image Matting Pricing

Aiarty Image Matting is available for macOS and Windows, and you need to purchase separate licenses.

You can get the lifetime version of Aiarty Image Matting for $75, and this lets you use the app on 3 Macs. If you’d rather stick to a subscription plan, you can get one for $49 per year. The developer also offers a 4-in-1 lifetime bundle for only $129 — you save 62% and get Aiarty Image Enhancer, VideoProc Converter AI, 5KPlayer, and Aiarty Image Matting.

In addition to the free trial, a 30-day money-back guarantee is available. So, if you don’t like what it offers, you can get back what you paid. The company offers new AI model training updates and GPU acceleration options with all versions, which is great.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Accurately handles fine edges and details for complex subjects like hair and fur.
• Supports batch processing of up to 3,000 images for efficient bulk editing.
• Offers 4K resolution support and AI upscaling for high-quality results.
• Provides multiple specialized AI models for different matting scenarios.
• Includes manual editing tools for precise adjustments and refinements.
• Processes images locally, enhancing data privacy and security.

Cons:

• Requires a powerful computer with a high-end GPU for optimal performance.
• Lacks a cloud-based or browser-accessible version, limiting remote accessibility.

The Bottom Line

After thorough testing, we believe you would appreciate Aiarty Image Matting if you have some experience with professional image manipulation tools like Photoshop. In that case, you know that online tools for image background removal don’t really work.

But Aiarty Image Matting does something better without taking up a lot of system resources. Thanks to those high-efficiency AI models, the background removal/image matting process does not take a toll on your Mac, either.

In the end, considering how much you pay for all these features, Aiarty Image Matting is a great investment for professionals out there. If anything, its bulk processing and editing options add more value when you are dealing with hundreds of photographs every day.

For more details, go Aiarty site to get a free trial.