Why do so many “transparent images” online have those fake transparent backgrounds? It doesn’t benefit anybody
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Typically, those images are for sale on the website. By providing a “fake” transparent background, they allow you to see what the image will look like, but you can’t actually use it (easily) without paying the licensing fee.
So it does benefit someone – the company that owns the image and has offered it for sale. It also benefits you, in that you can see the image before deciding to purchase.
Do you mean vector images?
If you’re referring to the grey and white chequered pattern, it’s not really the background of the image. It’s what happens when a website tries to render a transparent PNG image without knowing it’s a transparent PNG.
I couldn’t be specific on the details without researching (I’m sure someone else will chime in), but if you look at a transparent PNG in the windows photo viewer, you’ll see it has a black background. If you tell a website to display an image, without stipulating that it’s transparent, it will show the chequered pattern background.
Transparent images only tend to work if the application displaying them knows that it’s meant to be transparent.
To compound the problem – when you’re looking at search engine image results, they’re all cached from elsewhere. So a ligitimate transparent PNG from a stock image site, gets represented with a JPEG thumbnail cached by the search engine. How does software show a transparent background in a JPEG? It shows that chequered pattern. If you right click and “save image”, you’re getting the jpeg, not the png you really want.
They benefit the ones hosting the image, so you can’t just simply copy it and use it.
It’s like you’re complaining about people locking the cars you’re trying to break into.
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