New AI tools: background removal and a custom motif generator

We added a few AI-backed tools this week. Not as a buzzword exercise: each one solves a specific problem that comes up constantly in laser prep, and each one still runs through the same dithering and vector tracing that already power the site.

Background removal that actually holds fur and hair detail

Photo Prep and the Vectorizer both already had one-click background removal, running fully in your browser. That free version is still there and still the default. It's fast and it's fine for most photos.

Where it struggles is fine detail: a dog's fur, a wisp of hair, anything with soft or textured edges. For those photos there's now an AI-Enhanced option next to the free one. It uses a dedicated server-side model that reads edges far more precisely, so a pet portrait or a windblown-hair photo comes out clean instead of leaving a fuzzy halo.

Both options crop to the subject automatically. Pick whichever looks better for your photo; there's no wrong choice, just a quality tradeoff for the harder cases.

Auto Enhance: one click instead of four sliders

Photo Prep also got a free Auto Enhance button. It reads the actual histogram of your photo and sets brightness, contrast, and gamma automatically, the same adjustments you'd otherwise hand-tune with sliders. Useful on its own, and a good starting point before fine-tuning further.

A custom motif generator, built for cutting, not decoration

The new one is the AI Custom Motif Generator. Type a description (a pine tree, a compass rose, a mountain range) and it generates a silhouette-style image, then automatically traces it into a clean, laser-ready cut SVG using the same tracer behind the Vectorizer.

This isn't a general AI art generator pointed at your laser. Most image generators default to full-color, photorealistic output, which is exactly the wrong shape for a cut file. The prompt is steered under the hood toward flat, high-contrast, single-subject silhouettes, so what comes out traces cleanly on the first try instead of needing heavy cleanup.

Threshold and simplify controls are right there if a result needs adjusting, with the same plain-language explanations we added to the Vectorizer's controls. Generation is free (a few tries a day); downloading the finished SVG follows the same one-free-then-credit model as the rest of the site.

How the credits work

Nothing changed about pricing here: it's the same account-wide credit balance that already covers Vectorizer downloads. Buy a pack once and it works across the Vectorizer, Photo Prep's AI-Enhanced background removal, and the new Motif Generator. First download on any of them is still free.

All three tools require signing in for the AI-backed steps specifically (not the free ones); that's a cost-control measure on our end, not a feature restriction; free background removal and SVG tracing stay open to everyone.