Clipping path
What is a clipping path?
A clipping path is a vector outline drawn over a photograph that cuts the product away from its background, so it can sit on white or on nothing at all. The path is a curve rather than an eraser stroke: it stays in the file, can be edited later and leaves a clean, hard edge. Hair, fur, mesh and glass need a mask instead, because an outline cannot hold a soft or see-through border.
Example
A tool shop is adding 240 new items. The photographs come from the warehouse: a grey floor, a shadow falling left, and the light coming from a different angle in every other frame. The marketplace demands a main image on pure white, while the shop shows products on a light grey block. The listing looks assembled from several other people’s catalogues.
Cutting out happens once per item: an outline around the product, then a white JPG for the marketplace and a transparent PNG for the site and the banners. One file yields three outputs. Across 240 items that is 720 files, but a single decision about edge, shadow and scale rather than 240 separate ones.
Why it matters for a business
White is a listing requirement rather than a matter of taste: marketplaces reject main images with props and scenery, and a product grid reads as one shop only when every item is cut the same way and sits at the same scale.
The outline does a second job. A transparent file goes into an ad, a catalogue or a label without a new shoot; the product can be dropped onto a colour block, given a soft shadow or turned inside a composition. A careless path — a white fringe along the edge, a cable clipped off — shows most on a dark background, which is exactly where the advertising lives.
What to ask
- Does this set need a path or a mask? Hair, down, mesh and glass call for a mask, and the wrong choice leaves a halo along the edge.
- What comes back: a PSD carrying the path, a transparent PNG, a white JPG for the marketplace? At what size and in which colour profile?
- Does the product keep its own shadow, or is a new one built? Within one catalogue the shadow has to be the same.
- Who checks the edge at 100% zoom, and who fixes the file if the marketplace rejects the image?
- How are files named so they can be uploaded in one batch against item codes, with no manual matching?
Cutting out, cleaning the background and preparing files for the shop and for print are part of photo retouching.