Is this PNG really transparent?
Find out in a second, and why not: a painted-in checkerboard, a format that cannot hold transparency, invisible pixels stretching the size, or a pale rim from the old background. Then fix it here, free.
Four problems that all look like "not transparent"
- The checkerboard is painted in. The squares are pixels. Found by the grid itself: two greys, alternating in squares of one size, across the border of the image. Removed without touching white parts of the design.
- The file cannot hold transparency. A JPG, or a PNG saved as plain colour, has no alpha channel. The header says so; no amount of editing the pixels will change it, so the tool tells you to re-save rather than pretending.
- Invisible pixels stretch it. Faint shadows and stray marks under 10% opacity make the design measure bigger than it looks. That is where the box around your print-then-cut design comes from.
- A rim from the old background. Edge pixels that are half see-through but still mostly white show as a pale outline on a dark shirt or mug.
Why a checker, and not only a remover
Background removers guess, and when they guess on artwork that is itself white or grey, they take the design with the background. The honest first step is knowing which problem you have. Three of the four have a safe, exact fix, and it is right here. The fourth, a solid background, is a different job, and the background remover is built for it.
Look at it on dark. A design that looks perfect on the checkerboard can have a white rim you only see on a dark background, which is where it will usually end up: a black shirt, a slate coaster, a dark sticker backing.
Questions
Why does my "transparent PNG" have a checkerboard when I use it?
Because the checkerboard is part of the picture. Many image-search results labelled "transparent" are really a screenshot of transparency: the grey-and-white squares were saved as ordinary pixels. They print, they cut and they sit on your design like any other colour. This tool finds the grid and removes it.
Will removing the checkerboard delete white parts of my design?
No, and this is the part generic removers get wrong. A pixel is only removed when it is the colour its square in the grid should be, and when it belongs to a run of those that spans more than one square. A white area of your design matches only every other square, so it never forms such a run and is kept. The one place to look closely is where white artwork touches the checkerboard directly; the edge squares there can be taken.
How do I check whether a PNG is transparent?
Drop it in above. The tool reads the file's header, which says whether the format can hold transparency at all, then counts the see-through pixels. A PNG saved as plain RGB, or a JPG renamed to .png, has nowhere to store transparency, and you will be told so rather than shown a misleading preview.
My PNG is transparent, but Cricut draws a box around it. Why?
Usually invisible pixels. A soft shadow, a stray brush mark or leftover background at 1–5% opacity cannot be seen, but it is not empty, so anything that measures the image by its non-empty pixels includes it. Switch the preview to Reveal: those pixels show in pink. Clear invisible pixels removes them.
Why is there a white outline when I put my design on a dark shirt?
The edge pixels still carry the old white background. They are half transparent, which keeps the edge smooth, but their colour is mostly white. Fix edge colours replaces that colour with the artwork's own and keeps the smooth edge, which is better than cutting the edge away.
Is my image uploaded?
No. It is decoded and checked by code running in this page. Nothing is sent anywhere, which matters when the file is a design you sell.