How to fix the Tumblr transparent png glitch
I was struggling with this strange problem for weeks and found absolutely no help on Google for it, so now that I FINALLY know what the problem was (and it was a painfully simple solution) I figured I might as well post the solution here in case someone else has this same problem.
Despite doing everything correctly, your transparent PNG looks like this when it’s clicked on or when it’s displayed on a personal blog. Parts of the background you’ve already deleted are showing up again, and it looks like hell, and it’s not worth posting at all because the transparency isn’t working.
This is caused by, I kid you not, posting an image that is too big for Tumblr’s set limits for image sizes. Why these limits would break the transparency and cause jagged already deleted background elements to show up again, I haven’t the faintest clue.
So here’s what you do to fix it:
This was the original pixel size of this artwork. It really was a huge file, but I usually work with large files since I edit a lot of wallpapers.
Thanks to this super helpful primer on Tumblr dashboard image sizes, I now know what approximate size I should be making this PNG.
A quick resize and a re-saving of the file, and…
That’s more like it.
And yet previous huge transparent PNGs worked fine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ TUMBLR YOU MAKE NO SENSE AT ALL
Man, I was working on a draft art post with transparent background and couldn’t figure out why the white bg kept persisting. Apparently I had to shrink the image so much that the quality becomes garbage in order to post with transparency.
This is a post of 2016 - and this is still an issue in 2026?? Like idk, give me a warning it doesn’t work cus it’s too big or smth. But heck, my bigger transparent pomni art of a while back worked totally fine, like OP said here.
Spouting stuff like wanting to change the tumblr reblog system instead, huh staff?
