Exported *.png images seem to have black background when it should be transparent

[ad1066]

Looking at the bmp is probably not all that helpful, as there's no transparency support in the bmp format. It sounds like the Epson program has incomplete transparency support. It's rendering the partial transparency of the blue circle properly (as we can see the smaller circle in the middle that's coming from the image of the CD behind it), but it's not correctly rendering the full transparency around it.

Like others have said, it seems to be a difference in the way Xara and PS encode information about fully transparent areas, which normally shouldn't make any difference to programs that properly support the transparency.

-- Ben

[molucca]

Epson apparently cannot handle a transparent PNG.

Rich

[Scotty]

Hi,
I have the Epson RX500 Photo Printer and recently upgraded my Computer to Windows 7 Premium 64Bit and thought that my Printer driver would be out of date, but on Epson website they have update drivers for 64Bit systems, maybe your printer driver update available.
Jim

[handrawn]

a print utility that doesn't support PSD cheepskates wait till I tell the PS freaks

anyhow its free I downloaded it just out of curiosity because of that

it does not like the transparent PNG - that much is clear

but the good news is, I don't think it matters if you are printing a CD label because being a dedicate tool it's going to ignore the area outside the circle defined in the program - so you just need to align it right

its an old program by design - I don't have an epson printer so I can't test it to finish, sorry

BTW it will support TIF if they are not compressed - but they are as big as BMP then

[handrawn]

ok Harry - more info

if it is important to get a transparent background heres how you do it:

you make a true colour export from designer using a background colour that does not appear in your design - in your case a nice shade of red maybe

you use the 'picture' button to open the 'select picture' box and you find and click on your image - then you click on the picture adjustment button on the right of the box, and then the transparency tab, tick 'specify transparency color' and then click on the red in the box preview - click 'ok' and it should come in as you want it

my my this takes me back 10 year - we shall not be recommending this utility in the near future, no disrespect....

[HarryPutnam]

ok Harry - more info

if it is important to get a transparent background heres how you do it:

you make a true colour export from designer using a background colour that does not appear in your design - in your case a nice shade of red maybe

you use the 'picture' button to open the 'select picture' box and you find and click on your image - then you click on the picture adjustment button on the right of the box, and then the transparency tab, tick 'specify transparency color' and then click on the red in the box preview - click 'ok' and it should come in as you want it

my my this takes me back 10 year - we shall not be recommending this utility in the near future, no disrespect....

Very nice... and thanks for taking so much time to figure it out. No offense taken about the Epson CD Print tool, but how many printers can even print to CD/DVDs... when the R800 was new... there were an easy number to remember ZERO. Even now only 3 or so, I think. And there appears to be no other software to do the job either.... at least my googling didn't find it when I went looking.

As you may have guessed I was not all that thrilled with the prmitive software either.

[HarryPutnam]

ok Harry - more info

if it is important to get a transparent background heres how you do it:

you make a true colour export from designer using a background colour that does not appear in your design - in your case a nice shade of red maybe

you use the 'picture' button to open the 'select picture' box and you find and click on your image - then you click on the picture adjustment button on the right of the box, and then the transparency tab, tick 'specify transparency color' and then click on the red in the box preview - click 'ok' and it should come in as you want it

Turns out you can do the same with the exports with the black background too.
Just eyedropper in the black and its gone (Assuming you don't have `black' in the art work... that works too).

my my this takes me back 10 year - we shall not be recommending this utility in the near future, no disrespect....

hehe... no indeed. But then what would you recommend to print CD/DVDs?

PS-- It was very gracious of you to take time to figure this all out... thanks.

[handrawn]

figure of speech Harry, I write fiction not reviews [though going by some reviews I read on the web, not sure there's much difference a lot of the time ]

[jimhanus]

I don't know if this helps or not, but using your original image my Epson Print CD utility doesn't show the black area in the final working area (see screenshot). It does however shot it in the Select Background Image window. Epson CD version 1.20a. The black will show up if I use the Select Picture button instead of the Background button, so the black area is still there but is cropped out when used as a "Background".

Jim

[HarryPutnam]

I don't know if this helps or not, but using your original image my Epson Print CD utility doesn't show the black area in the final working area (see screenshot). It does however shot it in the Select Background Image window. Epson CD version 1.20a. The black will show up if I use the Select Picture button instead of the Background button, so the black area is still there but is cropped out when used as a "Background".

Jim

Thanks for the observation... I did notice that too, but of course when using `background' you cannot slide it around or adjust at all.

Also other posters have mentioned that even when using the `picture' button, the black is really in the area you want beyond the outer circumference.
Unfortunately I often find I end up having to slide the thing around to get the fit I want and so often I'll get into that no-mans-land that should theoretically be out beyond the outer circumference.

Do you notice another phenomena with he epson tool... that is, whatever size you make a picture, the epson tool imports it always much smaller than the template in the epson tool? (I'm talking about when using the `picture' button.

PS- do you know of any more sophisticated tools for printing to CD/DVD?