Clipdrop

Clipdrop is an AI-powered visual creation and image editing platform designed to help users create, enhance, clean, and transform images quickly. The platform brings several AI image tools together in one place, making it useful for photographers, designers, marketers, creative agencies, ecommerce businesses, real estate professionals, and other users who regularly work with visual content.

Clipdrop was created by InitML, a company co-founded by Cyril Diagne, Jonathan Blanchet, and Damien Henry in 2020. InitML joined the Y Combinator Winter 2021 batch and developed Clipdrop and Cleanup.pictures. The company was acquired by Stability AI in February 2023 and later sold to Jasper in February 2024. Clipdrop remains available as a dedicated visual AI platform while its technology is also incorporated into Jasper’s AI offerings.

One of Clipdrop’s main strengths is its collection of specialized image editing tools. Users can remove unwanted objects, people, text, and other elements from images with Cleanup. Instead of manually using traditional cloning or editing tools, users can mark an area and allow the AI to reconstruct the surrounding image. Clipdrop specifically presents Cleanup for photographers, real estate professionals, creative agencies, and ecommerce businesses.

Clipdrop also provides an AI background removal tool. It can automatically identify the main subject in an image and separate it from the background. This is particularly useful for ecommerce product photography, advertising images, social media graphics, presentations, and other situations where a clean transparent or replacement background is required. The free version allows users to remove backgrounds and download HD results, while higher resolution capabilities are available through paid access.

The Replace Background tool allows users to transform the background of an existing image using AI. This can help businesses create different product scenes without having to arrange a completely new photoshoot. It can also be useful for marketing campaigns, product listings, creative compositions, and advertising materials.

Clipdrop’s Text to Image tool provides AI image generation from text prompts. Users can describe a visual concept and generate an image based on the prompt. The platform describes its image generation technology as capable of producing high resolution and realistic images.

Another major feature is Image Upscaler. Clipdrop can enlarge images while attempting to preserve and improve important visual details. Its current tool supports multiple enlargement levels, including 2x, 4x, 8x, and 16x depending on the access level. The tool can also reduce noise and improve sharpness, making it useful for photographs, screenshots, ecommerce images, and other low resolution visual material.

Uncrop is another distinctive Clipdrop feature. It allows users to extend an image beyond its original boundaries and generate additional content around the existing photograph. This can be useful when adapting images to different aspect ratios or preparing visuals for different platforms.

Relight allows users to change or enhance the lighting of an existing image using AI. Instead of needing to recreate a photograph under different lighting conditions, users can manipulate the lighting after the image has been captured. This can be useful for product photography, portraits, creative work, and marketing visuals.

Clipdrop also includes a Text Remover tool that automatically detects and removes text from images. It can be useful for cleaning photographs, mockups, ecommerce images, property photographs, and other visuals where unwanted text needs to be removed. Clipdrop identifies ecommerce, real estate, creative agencies, and mockup creation among its use cases for this tool.

The platform also offers a Universal Resizer designed to resize images for different social media formats. This can help content creators and marketing teams adapt a single visual for different publishing requirements.

For professional users and developers, Clipdrop provides API access. The API allows developers to integrate Clipdrop’s image AI capabilities into their own applications and workflows. Available API documentation covers services including Cleanup, image upscaling, Reimagine, background removal, text removal, background replacement, text to image, and Uncrop.

Clipdrop’s API is usage based rather than being included as a standard unlimited API package. This makes it more suitable for businesses that want to integrate image processing into their own products and control usage according to their requirements.

Clipdrop also provides plugins that allow its technology to be used within other creative workflows. The company’s website specifically mentions using Clipdrop through desktop plugins, including Photoshop, allowing users to access AI image editing without completely leaving their existing creative environment.

The platform is relatively straightforward for beginners because many of its tools are designed around a simple upload and process workflow. A user can upload an image, select the desired AI function, and download the result without needing advanced photo editing knowledge. At the same time, its API makes the technology useful for developers and businesses that need automated image processing.

Clipdrop has a strong focus on commercial visual production. Its website states that its terms do not limit the commercial use of images generated through Clipdrop, although users should still review the current terms for the specific service and use case.

The platform’s main limitation is that the most advanced usage is tied to paid access and usage limits. The Free plan provides access to several tools but imposes daily limits on many operations and resolution restrictions. The Pro plan provides substantially higher limits and access to high resolution processing. API usage is separately priced based on consumption.

Overall, Clipdrop is a practical AI image toolkit rather than a single-purpose image generator. Its combination of generation, background removal, cleanup, upscaling, relighting, uncropping, text removal, resizing, and API access makes it suitable for users who need several image production and editing capabilities in one platform.

Pricing and Review

Clipdrop currently offers a Free plan, a Pro plan, and a usage-based API option. The Free plan costs $0 and provides limited daily access to tools such as Text to Image, Uncrop, Background Removal, Image Upscaler, Cleanup, Relight, Text Remover, and Replace Background. The current pricing page lists limits such as 20 uses per 24 hours for several tools and 50 uses per 24 hours for Text Remover.

The Pro plan provides substantially higher usage limits, with the pricing page currently showing up to 1,000 uses per 24 hours for many tools. Pro also provides high resolution processing, including image upscaling up to 16x, and queue skipping. The current pricing page advertises a free trial for Pro, although the exact trial duration should be checked at signup because the dynamically displayed pricing page does not expose the duration in the accessible text.

The API uses usage-based pricing and is intended for businesses and developers that want to integrate Clipdrop’s image capabilities into their own products.

Review: Clipdrop is a versatile choice for users who need quick AI-powered image editing rather than a complicated professional photo editor. Its background removal, cleanup, upscaling, relighting, text removal, and uncropping tools cover many common visual production tasks. The free plan is useful for trying the platform, while Pro is more appropriate for frequent high-resolution work. Developers also benefit from dedicated APIs. The main consideration is the daily usage limits on the Free plan and usage-based API pricing.