Licence Key & Download (2026) | Free Download

Most “free background remover” tools are either web apps that shrink your image and stamp a watermark on it, or AI one-clickers that cut through hair like a lawnmower. CutOut takes a slower, more hands-on approach: you tell it roughly what’s inside and what’s outside the object, and it works out the messy edge between them. It’s not new software, but it’s a proper desktop program that keeps working offline, and right now the Pro edition costs nothing.

I’ve covered Franzis giveaways on Techno360 for years (the first CutOut freebie I wrote about was version 6), so I went through this one end to end on my Windows 11 PC before rewriting this post. Every step below matches what I actually saw on screen.

What CutOut 10 Professional actually does

CutOut is made by Franzis, the German publisher behind HDR projects, NEAT projects and a long list of other photo tools. Its main job is matting: lifting a subject off its background so you can drop it onto a new scene, blur what’s behind it, or save it as a transparent PNG.

When you click the Cut Out button, it asks which of three methods you want. Picking the right one is most of the skill:

Once the cut is done, a short menu lets you swap in a new background, apply a lens-blur effect to the original background for a fake shallow-focus look, push the subject onto its own layer, or save the result as PNG or PSD. Version 10’s manual lists the changes over CutOut 9: a cleaner Outside/Inside settings panel, a better Magnet selection tool, sharper edge simplification, an improved brightening tool for dark edges, and faster loading of very large images.

Outside the cut-out tools, it’s a decent all-round editor:

• Exposure, colour, white balance, sharpening, noise reduction and instant filters
• Layers, text, selection tools and a smart eraser that fills in the gap after removing an object
• Opens JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, GIF and most camera RAW formats (NEF, CR2, ARW, DNG, RAF, RW2 and others)
• HDR merging from bracketed shots, plus 3D stereo images saved as MPO
• Photoshop and Photoshop Elements plug-ins (32- and 64-bit) are in the download, so you can use the matting tools from inside Adobe’s apps

How to claim CutOut 10 Professional for free

There are three parts: get a key from Franzis, get the installer from COMPUTER BILD, then join the two. The download takes the longest.

Step 1: Request your licence key

1. Open the Franzis CutOut 10 registration page. The product line should read “CutOut 10 professional – Computerbild”.
2. Type your email, tick the two consent boxes, pass the reCAPTCHA and press Send. The second box opts you into Franzis promo emails. You can unsubscribe later, and the form also links to an alternative way to get the product without joining the newsletter.
3. Check your inbox for a mail from registrierung@reg.franzis.de. Mine came within a couple of minutes. It’s in German, but all you need is the confirmation link near the top. If it isn’t there, look in Spam or Promotions.
4. The link opens your Franzis account page, which shows a User-ID and a Registration-Key. The Registration-Key is your licence. Copy it now. Franzis emails it to you too, but it’s easy to lose in a German inbox.

Step 2: Download and install

1. Go to the COMPUTER BILD download page and hit the download button. The page is in German, and Chrome’s translate option handles it fine.
2. You’ll get CutOut-10_professional_winde.zip (about 32 MB). Extract it with Windows’ built-in tool, 7-Zip or WinRAR.
3. Inside you’ll find CutOut10ProSetup.exe (about 26 MB), four PDFs (including the German manual) and a Photoshop Plugins folder.
4. Run the setup, pick English and go through the wizard. My installer didn’t offer any bundled extras.

Step 3: Activate the full version

1. Start CutOut 10 Professional. A Trial Version window opens with a 30-day countdown.
2. Paste your Registration-Key into the licence field and click Activate. Use Activate here rather than Try, which only opens the program in trial mode.
3. Restart the program. The trial nag is gone and you’re on the full version.

My hands-on impressions

To test it, I used photos from my own camera roll: a person standing on a hill road in heavy fog, with trees on one side and a crowd fading into the mist behind. Fog is a tough test because the subject and the background share the same washed-out grey.

Opening a photo for editing brings up a “What’s wrong?” helper first. It’s a grid of common problems (exposure, noise, white balance, distortion, portrait touch-ups, “Foggy” under sharpness and contrast, and an Erase it! object remover). Each tile takes you straight to the right tool. These are shortcuts into the regular editing tools, not an automatic AI fix. It’s a nice touch for beginners, and you can switch it off with the checkbox at the bottom.

For the cut-out itself, I went with Inside/Outside Edge Matting, since nothing about this background was a plain colour. The settings panel splits neatly into Outside and Inside, each with a polygon tool, a lasso and a pixel “injector” for fine corrections. You can switch between drawing by selections or by strokes. There’s also a curve control for the mask edge and a row of post-matting tools for cleaning up afterwards.

Don’t expect a one-click result. The program only calculates the strip between your two outlines, so the edge is only as clean as your outlines are careful. Where the subject and background are close in colour or brightness, as they are in fog, Franzis itself recommends refining the mask by hand afterwards. Budget a few minutes of zooming in and touching up with the post-matting tools.

Here’s my take after using it:

Is the free version worth it next to CutOut 11?

Franzis’ newer edition, CutOut 11 Professional, is now sold through Ashampoo’s store. It lists at $100 and was discounted to $25 when I checked on 14 October 2026. For version 10, Franzis lists Windows as the only requirement and doesn’t publish detailed hardware specs. I ran it on a 64-bit Windows 11 PC without problems.

For occasional cut-outs, like product shots for a listing, a profile photo on a clean background or a fun montage, version 10 handles the job just fine. Ashampoo also sells a reduced-price upgrade to CutOut 11 for owners of older versions, so check its current terms if you outgrow the free one.

If you’d rather have an AI tool make the first pass, our Aiarty Image Matting free licence post covers a tool that does exactly that. To remove unwanted people or cars instead of cutting out a subject, see NEAT Projects 3 free full version, another Franzis tool. The Franzis Photo-Video Toolbox giveaway bundles six more of their editors.

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