Sticker maker: turn a photo into a die-cut sticker

This sticker maker turns a photo into a die-cut sticker. Open a picture of your dog, a friend or a favorite pair of sneakers, and the AI cuts out the subject, trims away the rest and surrounds it with a white border that follows its outline. Everything outside the border is transparent, so the PNG you download already has the shape of a sticker. It's free, with no signup or watermark, and it runs in the browser on your phone or computer, so there's nothing to install and the photo is never uploaded. What you get is the file, ready for a sticker printer, a design or a chat; this site doesn't print or sell stickers.

What makes a good sticker photo

Stickers are usually seen small, so a photo has to work as a shape as well as a picture.

• One subject. A single face, pet or object makes a stronger sticker than a group, and anything else the AI keeps gets outlined too. Choose a shot where the subject stands on its own, or crop the photo on your phone first.
• A recognizable outline. The border traces the silhouette, so a clear pose works best: ears up, arms out, a hand giving a thumbs-up. A cat curled up asleep turns into a round blob.
• Contrast at the edges. A dark subject against a light wall, or the reverse, gives the AI a clean edge, and the border follows whatever edge it gets. A leftover patch of background gets a border of its own, so sweep the before/after slider over the outline and paint out leftovers with the erase brush; the guide to checking and fixing a cutout walks through it.
• Enough pixels. Because the sticker is trimmed to the subject, its size depends on how much of the photo the subject fills. A dog photographed from across the yard gives a small sticker, so get closer for one you want to print large. The photo tips for each kind of subject cover people, pets and products.

Choosing the border

Width runs from 1 to 10% of the subject's size, so it stays in proportion on any photo. A thin border hugs the outline and keeps the subject's own shape. A wide one turns it into a bold, simple shape: narrow gaps between legs or fingers fill in and spiky edges round off, which also makes the sticker easier to cut out by hand.

Color is white or black. White is the classic die-cut look and stands out on dark surfaces and in dark mode. Black suits a white or pale subject, such as a white dog or a white sneaker, whose edges would otherwise disappear into a white border.

Two checks before you download:

• Fine hair or fur can poke past a thin border; widen it to take in stray strands, or erase them.
• To see the sticker on a light or dark surface, click the white or black background swatch, then switch back to transparent before you download.

Using the sticker file

• On a printer's site. Printers publish their own file requirements, such as the formats they accept, the resolution they need and how much space to leave around the design, so check theirs before you upload. Leave the width box on Original: a printer can scale a big file down, but typing a larger width can't add detail the photo never had. If a printer wants more room around the design, raise the padding.
• On your own printer. Print on sticker paper and cut around the border. Most home printers have no white ink, and like transparent areas, white prints as bare paper, so a white border on white paper leaves no line to cut along. A black border gives you one.
• In a design. Place the PNG in a design app, on a slide or on a digital planner page. Only the sticker and its border show, on any color.
• In a chat. Some messaging apps let you add your own stickers, each with its own rules on things like dimensions, format or file size, so check the app's help pages. Choose 1:1 to make the image square without cutting anything off, then type the width in pixels the app asks for; a smaller width also makes a lighter file.