Difficult to know exactly what sells better between an isolation with shadows or a true isolation. I don't have the answer, but I personally prefer to keep the shadows, and my isolations do sell quite well 

I think that there are pros and cons to both choice.

But of course the best solution consists in keeping the shadow and adding a clipping path (without the shadow of course). It is however quite difficult to create a clipping path for complex objects.

A clipping path which includes the shadow is completely useless however.

Now, concerning the "light" background, having a pure white background all around the object is clearly preferable IMHO. The picture and the thumbnail looks better and it is easier for the designer to simply put the image over a white background.

When i started in stock some years ago i created a clipping path in my illustrations and isolated shots.
Later on, most sites started offerering different sizes at different prices, so pictures were being resized/downsampled for customers.

I decided to do a test : since i included the keywords "clipping path" in keywords and description i wanted to be sure that customers also got that clipping path in their download.  Surprisingly, every file of my own i downloaded/purchased from every site the clipping path  when checking in photoshop was no longer there.  To be sure i downloaded/purchased files of other members/photographers who included and mentioned "clipping path'... and again, not a single file had a clipping path.

My conclusion, the resizing of our images on the sites destryed the clipping paths.

I contacted every site about this issue and got a reply from SS only that they don't support clipping paths.

With all that in mind i don't take the time anymore to create one in photoshop.

Patrick.

If an image is properly isolated then a clipping path is a moot point because a reversed selction of the background will provide you with the same end result as embedding the path in the image.

My conclusion, the resizing of our images on the sites destryed the clipping paths.

I've heard that the clipping path is included only in the largest size images. If you create it while editing, it is free anyway. However nobody so far had confirmed that it raises the sells.

So it seems, that including a clipping path means only more work for us without any real benefit? SY

Even though SS doesn't support clipping paths, they are a benefit to designers because you can re-edit the area you want to isolated.  The edges are also more clean for extraction than if you didn't use one.  That's a benefit when you want to place the object on a new background.