This is a complicated one. I tried your link, which is to a stand-alone “Quick Action” of Adobe Express. Adobe Express is a cloud based (browser based) program so there is nothing to download & install (unless you count the mobile app you can put on your phone). There’s a free version and a paid Premium version that starts at $9.99 a month.
I used this free stand-alone feature to remove the background on three random photos from my computer. I was able to upload my image, remove background, and download result without having to sign-in to anything or create a new account. The downloaded results were the same size as the originals I uploaded and I was impressed with the job it did. If after clicking download, you stay on the page and wait (in my case anywhere from 5-30 seconds), the page refreshes and you now have your image, background removed, opened in the Adobe Express editor with this prompt over it.
If you click the 'Agree to continue" button, the prompt goes away and you’re in the free version of the editor.
If from there you click “Try Premium” from the lower left menu, you get this
This is where it gets complicated. At this point you haven’t downloaded & installed the program (not even an option with this one as it’s cloud-based) or agreed to start a Free Trial. You’re just using something they are putting out there as free in an effort to coax you into subscribing to Premium.
Going through the FAQs for Adobe Express you find this:
and then you have to look through Adobe’s general terms for all products to find what NFR means:
And then if you compare plan versions you see that the feature to remove backgrounds is a Premium feature available only for a limited time in the free version.
So … all the NFR stuff above makes it pretty clear that if you’ve clicked to officially start a Free Trial, you can’t use your results commercially. But what if you’re in the neverneverland of using the free stand-alone background remover without ever proceeding with starting a Free Trial? Does that fall under “or other similar designation”? As Leah said, there are no terms of use specifically for this free tool that is a lead-in to using the full version of Adobe Express, paid or otherwise. I think if something like this somehow made it to court, Adobe would lose as it’s all too murky and not clear at all.
I don’t think for a second that any of these services offering free background removal could/would ever come at someone for using a result commercially. I mean, how would they know? You’ve removed the background, added it to your custom image, flattened it, and used the overall composition wherever. It’s not possible for someone to recognize & say, oh, hey, that object in that image, they used MY bg remover tool to get that …
What I am getting at is that I don’t think anyone is in any legal danger for using this tool for commercially related graphics, but respecting IP and TOU is something near & dear to all our hearts as designers & artists, so from a strictly ethical standpoint, I think if there’s any doubt you should defer from questionable use until getting a definite answer from the source.
All that said, this tool does an amazing job! Here’s a cover image I was already using side-by-side with the result from the free AE bg remover. I picked it to test because the background and object colors are the same, plus it’s a glass so there’s transparency & reflection to deal with. I am really impressed with how this tool knew how to isolate the glass as subject and deal with all that. If it can do that it should have no problems with the standard Zazzle preview images.
