Photoshop transparency lost in import.

[Tallis]

I made a cutout in PS and saved it as PNG, and PSD, the background was transparent (& prevsiouly deleted) and the forground was the subject.

When I import or drag-drop to Xara, I get a white background, not a transparent one. Does anyone know why this is? Does Xara not recognize transparencies on incoming files?

Thanks

[Thatch]

Can't remember teh actual verbage but I believe there should be a option in teh PS export that allows you to set the export to 24bit w/transparency (or alpha, can't recall). I think the issue is with your export, not Xara. Properly exported I've not seen Xara have an issue with PNGs.

J

[Mike Bailey]

Turn off the background layer visibility when you save the png file.

[Tallis]

Mike, the cutout ~is~ the only layer, there are no others to turn off/on...

I just tried the PNG export ( "save as" more accurately ) option and all it gave me was interlaced or not. There was no lingo about transparent this or that.
Doesn not produce a transparent background when pulled into xara...


Let's see... let's try a TIFF format save...

Now tiff gives me a bunch of options, much more than PNG...
1- image compression... none - lzw - zip - jpeg
2- "pixel order" = interleaved or perchannel
3- save image pyramid (y/n)
4 save transparency (y/n)

wow... since the only pyramids i know are in egypt and mexico, uh, i guess i'll try to set transparecy to yes obviously... let's see.. ( i dont know why this whole thing didnt work in PNG, i thought that was quite the format to use for transparencies )

dialog "many programs do not support transparency in TIFF, continue?"

cool! that worked in xara.

Let's try gif...

yup that's good too...

interesting.. the cutout still has handles on all 4 corners, but the handles seem to hold invisible pieces-- the cutout at the center is the only visible thing in the file. I guess the shape doesnt change, it still stays a rectangle, only you can see it.

and regarding file type, now im puzzled about PNG and the lack of options...

PS- PS's "save for web" options give much more in the way of options than the regular save as PNG. Now i see PNG-8 and PNG-24. Where as the default jpeg slapped a white background around my cutout ( that much i know it would do ), changing the target file-type to png-8 quickly put the background to transparent. Nice. So I guess you have to use the save for web option of wanting PNG.

Confirmed. Came in to Xara with background transparent.

[Thatch]

Not sure what your doing. Perhaps it's the version your working in. (I'm using Photoshop CS2) The attached image was composited in xara. The red circle was created in photoshop with a graduated fill (from red to transparent) in a circular selection. It was then exported to png no interlace and imported into xara. The text and box with xara bitmap fill were done in xara.

J

http://capefearwriters.org/images/pngtest.jpg

[Egg Bramhill]

Tallis,

I'm not sure but I seem to recall that in another post someone mentioned that PS has it's own proprietotry PNG file type.

Could this be the root of your problem?

[Mike Bailey]

Mike, the cutout ~is~ the only layer, there are no others to turn off/on...

Maybe you need another layer?

Look Top image is Graphixman's treasurechest.jpg opened in Photoshop, I copied and pasted it onto a new layer. then the background layer was cleared. a selection was made around the treasurechest and the surrounding pixels were deleted, which makes that part of the image transparent. The background layer visibility is switched off and the file is saved as PNG.

lower image is XaraX1, the screen shot from Photoshop was imported, then the trreasure chest PNG file I just made was imported, as you can see the area of the original jpg that was removerd in photoshop is not visible on the png file in Xara.