We needed a batch of background-free product shots for a detail page. I checked every one of them on the transparent checkerboard, decided they looked clean, and handed them over. Then the layout dev dropped them into a light-coloured card and two of them came with a grey haze around the edge. The problem had been in the files the whole time. What was wrong was how I looked at them: a checkerboard is grey-and-white squares, and pale residue against pale squares is camouflage.
So I reordered the review. First question is now what the model thinks the subject is. Once that passes, four fixed locations for the edges. Then how far to fix, based on where the image ends up. I used to start at "is the edge clean", which is the wrong end.
Same image, bottom corner. In the original there's a white sliver tucked under the hand. In the cutout it's gone — the model classified the whole thing as background. Whether it belongs to the subject isn't the model's call, it depends on what the shot is for. Get this wrong and no amount of edge work helps, because what you're shipping is a different picture. Subject first, edges second.
Four locations, reviewed on mid-grey so white fringes and dark fringes are both visible. They aren't arbitrary — each one represents a different way this goes wrong. The mirrored cap is where highlights and background share a colour family and a model that can't separate them bites a chunk out. The lettering on the bottle tells you whether a semi-transparent subject drags its printed detail down with it; frosted glass, plastic film and mesh all suffer here. The gap between fingers and bottle checks whether interior holes are actually punched through, since plenty of models only handle the outer contour. The base-to-fingernail boundary is a fine edge — look for a layer shaved off.
Both backgrounds are needed because they expose different things. Dark surfaces pale residue and white fringes. Light surfaces dark fringes, dirty edges and background that never got removed. The checkerboard is bad at both, because its two square colours are near-white and light grey — everything it shows sits in the highlights, so it's structurally blind to pale things. On this batch the faint ghost of a background ornament only appeared on light; dark and checkerboard both looked fine.
You don't need to script this. ImgIng's background-removal page lists "black/white edge verification" as a capability, and the retouch panel lets you switch the canvas between transparent, solid colour and a background image, with a one-click "set to white" next to it. There's also a "verify download result" button at the top that shows the composited output before you download. My habit now is to flip to solid colour, black then white, before deciding whether anything needs fixing at all.
Then, when to stop. Not every flaw is worth fixing, and the test is what background this image finally lands on. If it only ever appears on a white page, pale residue is invisible and chasing it is waste. If it's going out as an asset that someone else will composite onto a background you'll never see, then interior gaps and semi-transparent regions have to be genuinely clean, because when it breaks you won't be in the room. When you can't tell, assume the second — reshipping costs more than one extra check.
Three things before I hand anything over now: confirm the subject boundary the model drew matches what I asked for, flip black and white and walk the four locations, and fix only as far as the final use requires. On the batch that broke, I had done none of them.
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