Transparency "Again" Don't kick me

[Joe Cramblit]

Just bought the XaraX program.

Opening or importing transparent background PSD's the transparency that I killed myself creating with the Pen Tool is gone.

It's hard to believe that this program cannot "maintain" a transparent background on a gif, png, psd or eps file.

How can I bring in images with transparent backgrounds and keep the backgrounds transparent?

Your patience and help appreciated.

[Joe Cramblit]

My apology .... PNG & GIF do come in transparent.

The problem appears to be just PSD's.

I have also discovered the program will not open or import Photoshop EPS files.
Since just about every EPS file I have is Photoshop EPS I'd have to save them in another format to use them.

[bcire68]

Hi Joe and welcome to the forum.

Just a thought....

Why create your transparency in Photoshop and then import it as a bitmap into Xara, when you can import the entire photo into Xara and then slice the image (with the pen tool) and at least keep the shape of the transparency a vector? (i.e. something that you can change later without having to redo all of the work)

I'm guessing that you are new to Xara, but that seems like a more flexable solution to me.

Regards,
Eric

[Joe Cramblit]

Hi Eric

Thanks. Yes I am brand new to XaraX. I take it transparent background PSD's created with the pen tool in Photoshop are not going to be transparent backgrounds when imported into Xara. That wipes out maybe 500 images for me which I don't particularly want to redo. Major pain.

Can I ask another question on a CODEC.

Evidently the latest tutorial on 3D requires a vid:wmv3 codec to run. All I get is audio. I cannot find that codec. All the other videos run fine. It's just the one marked "NEW" in red. The codec downloads here do not work.

[bcire68]

Joe,

Can't help you too much with that one. You should be able to paste vid:wmv3 codec into a search engine and find a download though. If that doesn't work, try the Xara Help site.

Eric

[stuseven]

. ...using Xara's excellent scalabe text tool, stu produces a
"K I C K M E" sign, and tapes it to Joe's shirt :-)

Just kidding... but I wonder if you couldn't just work on the image part,
and then add a new transparency background later ?

Just bought the XaraX program.

Opening or importing transparent background PSD's the transparency that I killed myself creating with the Pen Tool is gone.

It's hard to believe that this program cannot "maintain" a transparent background on a gif, png, psd or eps file.

How can I bring in images with transparent backgrounds and keep the backgrounds transparent?

Your patience and help appreciated.

[Joe Cramblit]

I just think it's really strange that transparent PSD's are imported as solid background bitmats. I've never encountered a program that lost the PSD's transparency before.

[Thatch]

Couldn't tell you why Xara can't import PSD files correctly... certainly seems like a feature that should be there.

However, simply save your psd files as png and import them with full transparency. Alternatively I have in the past made black and white masks of certain files and imported them in as transparency masks in Xara, but that was for a few special circumstances. PNG is an easy quick fix for most things.

Good luck,

J

[Big Frank]

I just think it's really strange that transparent PSD's are imported as solid background bitmats. I've never encountered a program that lost the PSD's transparency before.

Xara was never designed around raster compatibility. All that stuff came afterwards. It is and always has been a primarily a vector app at which it excels beyond compare. The fact that it has superb raster handling abilities as well is a bonus.

Why not just use Photoshop's batch utility to batch save all 500 images to PNG and then your worries are over. Go and make a nice hot cuppa and when you come back, bish bash bosh, 500 transparent PNGs.

[Thatch]

Xara was never designed around raster compatibility. All that stuff came afterwards. It is and always has been a primarily a vector app at which it excels beyond compare. The fact that it has superb raster handling abilities as well is a bonus.

I think that is giving Xara a pass on an issue they should be held to. The fact is they have PS import ability. Therefore they should do it correctly. It's a fair gripe to have about the program. Perhaps if it was an issue of bringing in PS layers as well, a feature that could be called "advanced PS support" that might be a different issue. But doing away with the transparency of an image, creating white pixels where no color exists, well that's not supporting PS imports very well. It should be sorted.

The batch suggestion is a good one though. PS has good batching and could export those to 500 to png in very little time on a good machine.

J