YMSL emblem — cleaned cutout

Right-click any file below to save it.

Before and after, on the two backgrounds that matter

The alpha channel itself

The bottom rim at 4×, on a checkerboard

Original left, cleaned right. The grey squares are transparency.

Files

File	Size	What it is for
emblem-clean.png	689×704 · 854 KB	Full-resolution RGBA, trimmed to the artwork. Edit this one.
emblem-square.png	704×704 · 854 KB	Same artwork centred on a square canvas.
emblem-clean.webp	512×512 · 82 KB	Site asset. Replaces dist/emblem.webp.
favicon-180.png	180×180 · 80 KB	Favicon. Replaces logo.jpg, which is a JPEG with a white square behind it.
emblem-original.webp	780×805 · 142 KB	The original, kept for comparison.

What was changed

• David re-cut the outer rim by hand, removing 13,664 pixels of leftover halo that the automated pass had kept — a uniform 2-4px bright ring hugging the whole badge, which was opaque rather than semi-transparent and so invisible to an alpha-based cleanup. His edge is also softer (2,942 partial-alpha pixels against 1,315), which holds up better when the mark is scaled down. This file is his, with 19 stray eraser crumbs dropped and the canvas re-trimmed.
• The white skirt is gone. This was the real problem, and it was not an alpha problem at all — the drop shadow had been baked in as fully opaque near-white pixels. Invisible on a white page, a pale blob on a dark one, and invisible to any amount of alpha cleanup. Removed by flooding in from the edges of the canvas through bright, desaturated pixels, which climbs until it meets the dark saturated rim of the badge and stops there. The silver ring sits above that rim, so it survives.
• The white matte is gone. Edge pixels had been composited over white, so a 60%-alpha pixel next to rgb(39,30,29) artwork was reading rgb(251,247,246). Recovered with fg = (c − 255(1−α)) / α.
• Shadow spill cut below α=24, and the alpha ramp tightened from about three pixels to one.
• Render dust removed. The file carried disconnected fragments, some fully opaque, sitting up to 68px below the badge. Only the largest connected component is kept — a plain trim would have preserved them, which is why the canvas was 780×805 for 695×717 of artwork.