Cutting out on a white background and never checking the result on black, which is where every leftover edge pixel becomes visible.
Editing and retouching
Cut-out
Also called cutout, cut out image or knockout. Here is what it means, when it changes what you export, and what people get wrong.
Editing and retouchingRuns on your deviceUpdated 10 August 2026
The short answer
A cut-out is a photo with its background removed so the subject stands alone, ready to drop onto white, a colour or a new scene. In e-commerce it is the standard product shot: the item isolated cleanly, usually delivered as a PNG with a transparent background.
Updated
The short version
Cut-out at a glance
| Quick fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Also spelled | Cutout |
| Usual delivery | PNG with an alpha channel |
| Two methods | Vector clipping path or pixel matte |
| Best for hair and fur | Pixel matte, not a path |
| Print handover | TIFF or PSD carrying the path |
Slide the table sideways to see every column.
Path-based or pixel-based: which cut-out do you need?
There are two ways to isolate a subject and they suit different products.
A path-based cut-out traces the outline with Bezier curves. It is the right answer for hard-edged goods such as bottles, boxes, shoes, watches, tools and furniture. The outline is resolution independent, adds almost nothing to the file, and can be reopened and nudged months later.
A pixel-based cut-out produces a greyscale matte where edge pixels can be partly opaque. That is the only approach that survives hair, fur, feathers, tulle, netting, motion blur and the semi-transparent parts of glass. Browser tools, including Photomop's background removal, work this way, which is why they cope with a model's hair that a hand-drawn path would flatten.
Plenty of professional jobs use both: a path for the clean body of the product and a pixel matte just for the difficult region.
What makes a cut-out look convincing?
Almost all of it is edge work. The tells that give away a poor cut-out are consistent:
- A rim of the old background colour, which reads as a pale halo on a dark backdrop.
- A perfectly sharp outline on a subject that was slightly out of focus in the original.
- Missing contact shadow, so the product floats rather than sits.
- Inconsistent scale and margin from one catalogue image to the next.
The usual remedy is to pull the mask in by a pixel, feather it just enough to match the original softness, decontaminate the edge colour, and keep or rebuild a soft contact shadow under the product.
How should you save and deliver a cut-out?
For transparency, PNG is the dependable choice and WebP or AVIF give the same alpha at a smaller size for the web. For print or agency handover, a layered TIFF or PSD carrying the path and the mask keeps every decision editable.
For marketplaces, check the destination before you upload a transparent file. Amazon's product image requirements state a pure white main image, Walmart Marketplace expects pure white (RGB 255,255,255) as well, and Etsy does not support transparent PNGs, rendering transparent areas black. In all three cases, flatten the cut-out onto white and export a normal opaque file, while keeping the transparent original for everything else.
What people get wrong about cut-out
Each one is a real failure mode, not a style preference.
Deleting the contact shadow along with the background, so the product looks pasted rather than placed on a surface.
Uploading the transparent PNG to Etsy, where the empty area renders black instead of white.
Cutting out a low-resolution image and then upscaling, which enlarges the ragged edge along with everything else.
Questions people ask
Cut-out, answered
The follow-up questions people search for once they have the definition.
What is the difference between a cut-out and a clipping path?
A cut-out is the finished result, the subject standing alone. A clipping path is one technique for getting there, a vector outline that hides everything outside it. You can also produce a cut-out with a pixel mask, which is what any automatic background removal does.
Why does my cut-out have a white edge?
Because the pixels at the boundary are a blend of the product and the old white background, and the mask kept them. Contract the mask slightly, re-feather it, then apply a defringe or colour decontamination step so the edge takes its colour from the product.
Can you cut out hair properly?
Yes, but only with a graduated matte rather than a hard selection, and it works best when the hair contrasts with the background it was shot against. Hair photographed against a busy or similarly coloured backdrop is much harder to separate cleanly.
Should product cut-outs be transparent or on white?
Keep a transparent master and export whatever each destination wants. Transparent files are more flexible for your own site, adverts and themed sections. Marketplace main images generally need to be flattened onto pure white before upload.
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Photomop is a photo studio that runs on your own device. Resize, crop, compress, convert, batch edit, remove a background and change one all work in the browser tab you are reading this in, at full resolution and with no watermark. The on-device page shows you how to check that the photo stays put.