Help with transparency

[stijlfigurant]

Okay, here's a deal.

I've drawn myself some nice bit of leaf. Build from seperate layers. BUT. There is a little whiney white canvas in the back, who i can not destroy nor delete nor nothing. I am only able to close the eye. Then I see what I want to see. A nice, beautiful leaf, with a nice transparant background. BUT if i go and start saving this as an TIFF/GIF or some sort which would support my transparancy, it ends up saving this naggy canvas with it and I still haven't got some nice transparancy in it.

This is very, very frustrating because I'm needing it to be animated within after effects on to a backgroud. And I don't need all this horrorfying whitespace.

So. Anyone can help?

[handrawn]

Being a painting program, painter exports its bitmaps with a background [canvas] because it mimics the 'real' thing - artists dont paint on fresh air [at least, not when sober]. Except: it will save in psd format, which will preserve the transparency on layers; but you need photoshop or photoshop elements or xarapro or paintshoppro - some other program to open the psd that will allow you to delete the white background layer, merge the required layers and export in bitmap format with transparent background preserved.
The good news is that one such program GIMP is free. The bad news is its not a typical windows program, so if youre new to it it may take some getting used to.
It will however import the psd let you delete the white background and then merge the other layers as you wish - exporting as a bitmap with transparent background.
You can download gimp from www.gimp.org - follow the links and the instructions.
Presumably you cant manipulate the psd layers directly in after effects? - not a program I know.

[molucca]

You might look at the Layers palette. You can turn the canvas layer off, and export with transparency depending if the format supports transparency.

Riich

[molucca]

A Painter PSD with the Canvas layer turned on loaded into XXP with the layers available. I deleted the Canvas from there.

An XXP drawing with two layers saved to PSD loaded into Painter with the two layers and the addition of the Canvas layer.

Rich

[handrawn]

yep - that what I'd do with photoshop etc but painter seems to work different - you can hide the canvas but you cant delete it, nor can you make it transparent.
All save options from painter [I can only speak of windows compatible formats] that export as a single layer first merge the layers with the canvas when exporting - so your stuck with the canvas background color.
The two that export layers, psd and painters own format rif, will let you save layers with transparency, but you need to deal with these in another program to save as a single layer with transparent background.
Corel expert somewhere prove me wrong please, I'd love to find out how its done if it can be, but so far in my painter ix.5 no way have I found.

EDIT: molucca just seen your second post: yep agreed, xtremepro will delete canvas layer, as will photoshop, gimp, and if memory serves psp9 and probably others too... but you do need the addtional program painter alone is not enough it seems.
Thanks

[molucca]

XXP reads the PSD differently depending if the Canvas layer was on or off.

With the Canvas layer on, I could delete a background image in XXP. With the Canvas layer off, it seemed to be part of the page. I could turn things on and off, but I wasn't able to get to whatever it was. The painted image was transparent, of course.

In Photoshop, I got the addition of the Canvas layer, regardless.

I'll have to looks at TIFFs.

Need to look at merging layers, too.

If you wanted to use XXP to create a selection, I think I would export without object transparency to get on/off. Otherwise, it would act as a grayscale alpha.

Rich

[molucca]

Tried a PSD from E3 to see if a PSD always opens with a background layer.

In this case, the file opened with a single transparent layer in PS and XXP.

Must be the way Painter saves to PSD.

Rich

[handrawn]

Thanks again -good to know

[molucca]

I tried a TGA file. It didn't load into XXP with transparency. It loaded into Painter and PS with an alpha channel. I used the alpha channel for a selection and saved to PSD from PS and Painter. The Painter PSD opened in XXP with the Canvas layer and a transparent layer. Rich