Help with transparency

[molucca]

I was looking at other ways to get a format Painter can read. A TIFF from CD10 worked, but a PSD doesn't save the selection.

From Expression, I was able to save in TIFF and PSD for Painter. The PSD was like the file from Photoshop. The TIFF loaded with an alpha channel.

The CD10 TIFF did not load into Expression with transparency.

Rich

[molucca]

An example of creating a selection from an alpha channel, and having the selection available. I painted on a clone, and pasted to clone back to the original image. I loaded the selection and did a copy paste. Then turned the clone layer off.

Rich

[Jinny Brown]

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.

Hi Mangly,

When you open an image in Corel Painter that's on the "background" or base of the image, whether or not it had an opaque background in the original software, it will have an opaque background in Corel Painter.

To separate the imagery from the opaque background, you'll need to make a precise selection around the imagery, then click inside the selection using the Layer Adjuster tool to lift it to a Layer.

You may still see white edge pixels around the Layer's imagery that you'll need to clean up somehow.

If, on the other hand, your image was on a transparent background in the original software and you placed the imagery on a Layer in the original software, then saved the image in PSD format and opened the PSD file in Painter, you'd see the Painter Canvas is opaque but the Layer imagery has a transparent background.

Since you mention having "drawn" the images in other programs, I'm wondering if they're black line work. In that case, the solution is easy. Open the image in Corel Painter and (assuming it's now black line work on a white Canvas, do the following:

1. Select > All (or use Ctrl/Command+A) to select the entire Canvas.

2. Click inside the selection using the Layer Adjuster tool to lift it to a Layer.

3. To make the white background appear transparent, at the top left corner of the Layers palette, choose Gel from the Composite Method drop down list.

Painter has an autoselect that you might be able to use.

The command is Select > Auto Select, Using: (one of the following options: Paper, 3D Brush Strokes, Original Selection, Image Luminance, Original Luminance, Current Color).

If the background is solid color, you might try this:

1. Using the Dropper tool to pick the background color.

2. Use Select > Auto Select, Using: Current Color.

3. Use Select > Invert (or use Ctrl/Command+Shift+I) to invert the selection.

4. Using the Layer Adjuster tool, click inside the selection to lift it to a Layer.

5. Now your imagery is on a Layer with a transparent background. Again, you may need to clean up the edge pixels that could contrast with other colors below the Layer. If the original background was white, the edge pixels will also be white and, if you'll only have white below the Layer, you can change the Layer Composite Method to Gel to make the white edge pixels transparent.

It will open PSD files, and those can retain transparency.

If you mean by "it", Corel Painter, yes, we can open PSD files in Corel Painter. However, in order to have transparency once the file is opened in Corel Painter, in the orginal software the imagery must have been placed on a Layer with a transparent Layer background so it will be on a Layer with a transparent Layer background in Corel Painter.

If you mean by "retain transparency" that PSD files containing saved selections (Alpha Channels) can be opened in Corel Painter with those saved selections (Alpha Channels) intact, that's true but only in Painter 8 and Painter IX will those saved selections appear as Alpha Channels in the Channels palette. In earlier versions, Painter 5, Painter 6, and Painter 7, they'll appear as Masks (named Alpha 1, or whatever number) in the Objects palette's Mask section.

In any of the above Painter versions, the saved selection can be loaded using Select > Load Selection, then choosing the appropriate Alpha Channel name.

It does a PSP and a Tif that might have that capability.

Again, if you mean by "it", Corel Painter and you mean by "does" that we can open these file formats, PSP and TIFF in Corel Painter, that's only partially true.

Edit by Jinny on August 10, 2006 to correct information in the following paragraph about PSPIMAGE format support in Corel Painter versions.

Corel Painter IX.5 does support PSPIMAGE format. Since I no longer have Painter IX or Painter IX 9.1 installed, and don't remember if they supported PSPIMAGE format, all I can say is that Painter 8.1 and earlier versions did not support PSPIMAGE format.

End of Edit.

Corel Painter does support TIFF format.

It doesn't accept PNG/alpha.

That's true. In fact, Corel Painter does not support PNG format at all.

I haven't done this in a while, but you can load a selection from an alpha channel, and save the selection.

It's true that a selection can be loaded from an Alpha Channel.

If an Alpha Channel appears in the Channels palette there's no need to load and save the selection. It's already saved.

Or, make an autoselect and do a similar thing.

Once the Select > Auto Select command has been used, the selection is active. To have it available to use later, it needs to be saved (Select > Save Selection). Then it will appear in the Channels palette as an Alpha Channel, available to be loaded any time the artist wants to use that selection again.


Rich[/QUOTE]

[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!

[Jinny Brown]

Remi,

We are discussion using Corel Paint files in Corel Painter.

Rich,

What do you mean by "Corel Paint files"?

Do you mean Corel Painter files, or files saved from another program?

If the latter, what, exactly, is the name of the program?

I don't know of a program named Corel Paint and doubt there is one.

[Jinny Brown]

I was looking at other ways to get a format Painter can read. A TIFF from CD10 worked, but a PSD doesn't save the selection.

PSD files will retain saved selections (Alpha Channels) when you have the Save As dialog box's Save Alpha Channels box checked when saving the PSD file and the PSD file is then opened in Corel Painter.

If you didn't save the selection in Photoshop, it won't appear when the PSD file is opened in Corel Painter.


The same is true for TIFF files saved from Photoshop and opened in Corel Painter.

TIFF files will retain saved selections (Alpha Channels) when you have the Save As dialog box's Save Alpha Channels box checked when saving the TIFF file and the TIFF file is then opened in Corel Painter.

If you didn't save the selection in Photoshop, it won't appear when the TIFF file is opened in Corel Painter.

[molucca]

I opened a JASC Paint Shop Pro *.pspimage format in Painter IX.5, however, it did not reatin the transparency. I loaded the file back into PSP to see if the file was saved with transparency.

I saved a PSD format from JPSP9, and that opened in Painter IX.5 with transparency.

I'll have to look at a Corel Photo Paint 10 PSD again. I didn't know what not saving the selection with the file meant.

The Photo Paint TIFF didn't open with transparency in another application I tried.

Rich

[molucca]

I tried a Corel Photo Paint 10 PSD in Painter IX.5. It didn't support transparency. I made a selection and promoted the selection. This worked fine. The limitation was that this was on/off transparency support. With the TIFF, I got a grayscale channel and variable transparency. Rich

[Jinny Brown]

I opened a JASC Paint Shop Pro *.pspimage format in Painter IX.5, however, it did not reatin the transparency. I loaded the file back into PSP to see if the file was saved with transparency.

Hi,

You're right. Painter IX.5 does support PSPIMAGE format. I've edited my post above where I said Painter didn't support PSP format.

Sorry about that!

[NeoGreen]

Just what I was looking for. I was about to ask the same question. Thanks.