On presentation slides, flyers, webpages, product manuals and so on, we often lay out images to assist key ideas. 

Here is a common slide example. We see this kind of presentations all the time. 

Can we make it better? How would you improve it? 

From my vantage point, something feels broken. 

For example, the dark-themed images don't blend in well with the white background. The high contrast makes the images look surprising and obtrusive.  Plus, the slide looks so typical, frequent, almost cliché. 

How about a black background then? 

Now the background feels much quieter, similar to a museum showcase, which I enjoy personally.  The images blend in nicely with the background. But the coloring feels a bit plain, boring, and again too typical. 

How about a certain themed background, such as 3DEXPERIENCE World, or any other conference, or corporate templates which you are encouraged to adopt? 

Well, here comes definitely more energy now. And it supports conference or corporate guidelines well, to be a good team player. 

But the headsets feel being boxed into two patches, unnaturally separated from the background. The overall layout gets fragmented into arbitrary zones. 

What if we remove the backgrounds of the headset images? 

Aha, it's getting interesting, as the barriers between the headset and the background are fading away. 

The hero product connects well with the ambience. It feels like a natural part of the story, rather than a foreign object. 

But wait, there are still some glitches. The detailed view on the right still holds sharp edges on the top and bottom borders, which prevents a natural blending and truncates the headphone. 

Given the original image, let's overlap these sharp edges with the slide borders, to minimize the number of sharp edges. 

Now we are getting somewhere! 

The layout now enjoys certain depth and dynamics: an overview at the top left corner, and an detailed view on the right, seamlessly fitting into a energetically-themed background. 

The storyline feels more focused, fluid and natural, emphasizing the ear cover at the focal point. 

Now the question becomes: how to create images without background? 

Here  3DEXCITE Product Communicator  CATIA Composer SOLIDWORKS Composer can help. 

As shown in the image below, you can render images natively without background, by simply toggling on Alpha channel. Remember, this Alpha channel toggle shows up only when the format is set as PNG. 

To me, transparent-background images are must-haves, when a canvas itself has certain backplates, because we want to minimize the conflicts between multiple backgrounds. 

Hope this BeforeAndAfter iterative brainstorming can help with your slides, brochures, webpages, or any graphical layouts. 

Enjoy!