Keep the product. Leave the background open.

A transparent cutout is useful when the same product will appear in more than one design. Place it on a shop banner, a social graphic, or a new background without cutting it out again.

A reusable version of your photo

Lightbox’s workflow lets you remove the background, refine the subject, and export a PNG with transparency. The empty area around the product remains available for the next design.

A checkerboard in an editor usually represents transparency. It should not become part of the exported picture. Preview the cutout on light and dark background colors to inspect its edges before exporting.

Check the edges on light and dark

A pale fringe can disappear on white and become obvious on a dark background. Check the outline against both. Pay particular attention to handles, thin straps, jewelry, and the gaps between separate parts of a product.

Avoid removing soft edges just to make an outline look sharper. A knitted sleeve should still look knitted. Translucent materials may need a real photographed background to show them accurately.

Use transparency where it helps

Keep a transparent master when you will reuse an item in multiple compositions. Add a white background when you need a finished listing photo with a predictable appearance.

Some upload destinations flatten transparency or show it on a different background. Confirm the final result inside the actual listing page rather than relying on the preview in your photo library.

Choose the right file

JPEG does not preserve transparency. Renaming a JPEG file to PNG does not make its background disappear. Start with a real subject cutout and choose an export format that carries the transparent pixels.

Try transparent exports in the Lightbox TestFlight beta. Read beta access, background removal, and the PNG versus JPEG guide.