Help with transparency

[Mangly]

I would like to be able to import images I've drawn in other programs into Corel Painter, but cannot get rid of the white area round the selection. Is there a way of making this transparent? Without being familiar with the technical terms used in the help file ("channels" and such like), it's hard for me to find a solution there. Any help would be appreciated.

[molucca]

Painter has an autoselect that you might be able to use. It will open PSD files, and those can retain transparency. It does a PSP and a Tif that might have that capability. It doesn't accept PNG/alpha. I haven't done this in a while, but you can load a selection from an alpha channel, and save the selection. Or, make an autoselect and do a similar thing. I was reading that Cybia Alpha Works will act as a plugin in Painter. (freeware)

You might list the applications and file types you are using.

I usually convert PNGs to PSD for use in Painter.

Rich

[Mangly]

Dear Rich,
Thanks for your help. I don't have PhotoShop, but I see how that might work.

My problem with Corel Paint is that I find it frustratingly counter-intuitive; I mean, in every other program I have used, you use the Select tool, put a selection frame round whatever you want to select, then you can do stuff with it. You can move the bit of image around, copy it, etc. You could do this in my old Painter Classic. In Painter IX, I put a selection frame round something and all it selects is a bit of blank space. Or I copy a selected image and it turns out to have become, for some reason, semi-transparent: ???

I read all these inputs from people on the Forum, and I can hardly understand a word of what they say. I'm a graduate, fluent in French, passable in a couple of other languages; I'm writing a cartoon-strip style textbook to teach Latin to young children....(which is why I'm using Corel Paint), but I'm starting to think I must be a dimwit.

Is there a book, perhaps, that will take me through the program in nice easy stages? The difficulty with tutorials is that they deal with specific projects, which might or might not include the features I want to use.

Sorry about the rant. You might suspect I'm feeling a bit frustrated.
Sigh.

[Jinny Brown]

Dear Rich,
Thanks for your help. I don't have PhotoShop, but I see how that might work.

My problem with Corel Paint....

Corel owns several graphics programs and in order to be sure we can have the best chance of helping to answer questions, it's important to be specific about which program it is that you're asking about. For example:

• Corel Photo Paint
• Corel Paint Shop Pro
• Corel Painter

It's also very important to say which version you're using, including patch or Update number if any has been installed. Each patch or Update contains new things that require different answers to questions. For example:

• Corel Painter 6 (or Corel Painter 6.1 with the 6.1 patch installed)
• Corel Painter 7 (or Corel Painter 7.1 with the 7.1 Update installed)
• Corel Painter 8 (or Corel Painter 8.1 with the 8.1 patch installed)
• Corel Painter IX (or Corel Panter IX 9.1 with the 9.1 Update installed, or Corel Painter IX.5 with both the 9.1 Update and IX.5 Update installed)

I think you're talking about Corel Painter and probably Corel Painter IX (maybe with the IX 9.1 Update and/or the IX.5 Update installed). Or maybe you bought Painter IX.5 and didn't need to install the two Updates.

.... is that I find it frustratingly counter-intuitive; I mean, in every other program I have used, you use the Select tool,...

Since there isn't a tool in Corel Painter named "Select tool", which one of the Selection tools do you mean?:

• Rectangular Selection
• Oval Selection
• Lasso
• Magic Wand

... put a selection frame round whatever you want to select, then you can do stuff with it.

If by "frame" you mean a rectangular selection, the tool would most likely be the Rectangular Selection tool (though there are other ways to arrive at a rectangular selection using the Shape tools).

You can move the bit of image around, copy it, etc. You could do this in my old Painter Classic.

You can do those things in Painter IX and other full Painter versions as well.... and lots more than you could do in Painter Classic (whichever Painter Classic version you have).

In Painter IX, I put a selection frame round something and all it selects is a bit of blank space.

If the imagery you want to select is on the Canvas, you'll need to have Canvas highlighted in the Layers palette.

If the imagery you want to select is on a Layer, you'll need to have that Layer highlighted in the Layers palette.

If the imagery you want to select is on the Canvas but you have a Layer hightlighted in the Layers palette, and the area you select happens to be transparent on the highlighted Layer, you'll get (depending the method, copy and paste or click and move with the Layer Adjuster tool), a completely transparent Layer Floating Object or a completely transparent Layer.

Or I copy a selected image and it turns out to have become, for some reason, semi-transparent: ???

After you copy it, what do you do next?

If it's semi-transparent, it sounds like it's now on a Layer and either the Layer Composite Method is set to an option that makes the Layer appear semi-transparent or the selection was made of the background color and when the selection was inverted and the selected imagery separated from the background and placed on a Layer, the imagery appears to be semi-transparent because there was enough of the selected color (i.e. white background color) within the colored imagery to have been part of what was left behind on the Canvas.

I read all these inputs from people on the Forum, and I can hardly understand a word of what they say. I'm a graduate, fluent in French, passable in a couple of other languages; I'm writing a cartoon-strip style textbook to teach Latin to young children....(which is why I'm using Corel Paint), but I'm starting to think I must be a dimwit.

Don't worry, you're not alone. You also are not a Corel Painter graduate, fluent in Corel Painter, or even yet "passable" in the language of Corel Painter. You're not ready to write a Corel Painter textbook to teach Corel Painter to young, medium, or old Corel Painter (not Corel Paint) users.

Corel Painter is a complex program that's difficult at first even for people who are master Photoshop users (another complex and powerful program that shares a lot in common with Corel Painter though they are two very different programs designed for two very different purposes).

You're not a dimwit. It takes a long time to learn Corel Painter well and even those of us who've been using it for many years, every day of the year, still discover new ways to work using this program.

A lot of what I've said above is based on educated guesses because we'd need to have more specifics about how you're working, what kinds of brush variants, what kinds of Layers, etc. in order to give you really appropriate answers.

Is there a book, perhaps, that will take me through the program in nice easy stages? The difficulty with tutorials is that they deal with specific projects, which might or might not include the features I want to use.

The best combination for someone at your stage of learning Corel Painter is to:

• Set aside time to read the Corel Painter IX User Guide or Corel Painter IX Help Topics (the User Guide in HTML format accessible from within Painter's Help menu and very convenient to use). Read a small portion each day, beginning at the first chapter and reading following chapters in order as they appear in the Table of Contents.
• Join some good forums (active enough to be useful and where you'll get responses quickly) where Painter experts hang out who can help you when you get stuck and help you with Corel Painter terminology so you can look things up in Help Topics.

If you e-mail me at jinbrown @ pixelalley.com (without the spaces) and I'll give you a list of forums that will fit you needs best. Be sure to put something in the subject line that makes it clear the e-mail is about Corel Painter IX (or whatever version you have) and in the body of the e-mail, remind me of this thread since I get a huge amount of e-mail every day and it'll help me recall our "conversation" here.

Sorry about the rant. You might suspect I'm feeling a bit frustrated.
Sigh.

I hope you feel a little better after blowing off some steam and getting some responses.

You'll get past this stage fairly soon if you take the time to do what I suggested above. Don't put a time limit on it, though. That'll drive you nuts and it's no fun to be under self imposed (or any) pressure.

Cheers!

[Mangly]

The Tiff thing doesn't work; all I get is a blank white space when I paste the tiff image into Corel. Interestingly, it does work in Twisted Brush, another Paint program I've got.

[molucca]

A couple of screen shots. A Photoshop File into Painter. This was a PNG/alpha. It loaded with a white background, and the image. You can load a selection from the image layer. When you load a selection, it can be saved in Painter. Selections get saved as an Alpha channel. Look at the channel menu when the selection is saved. Once the selection is saved it becomes available, and it can be loaded back as a selection. I only know a little about how this works.

If you autoselect and get a selection, it can be saved and reused.

Rich

[molucca]

I have an old copy of Corel. I haven't used it in a long time. Rich

[molucca]

I loaded a PNG/alpha into Corel Paint 10, and tried a PSD export. The export said it didn't support the mask.

I changed to a TIF export. The Tif loaded into Painter with the alpha channel.

Rich

[remi]

Do you guys talk about Corel PHOTO-PAINT or Corel Painter?
These are different programs...