preserving transparency of imported gifs

Anonymoose <menolikeyspam> wrote in
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Help! Newbie question – I’ve been working with PS 5.5 for just a few weeks and this is the only problem I’ve not been able to figure out. Whenever I copy in a GIF with a transparent background, I can’t get PS to honor the transparency, even if I select Preserve Transparency for the layer copied to. I’ve gotten around this on simple images by cutting the image from the background using the magnetic wand, but for more complex images that’s just not feasible. I assume this is doable and it’s just my lack of knowledge, yes?

Yes.

Gif transparency is actually transparent pixels. It’s a setting in the file that says "treat X color as transparent." When editing, you’re not going to see it as transparent.

Whenever I
copy in a GIF with a transparent background, I can’t get PS to honor the transparency, even if I select Preserve Transparency for the layer copied to.

When you say "copy," you are talking about opening a GIF, selecting all, copying to the Clipboard, then pasting it into another image, right?

If so, you must convert the GIF to RGB color (Image->Mode->RGB) before copying it to the Clipboard.

—
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(Tacit) wrote in
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Whenever I
copy in a GIF with a transparent background, I can’t get PS to honor the transparency, even if I select Preserve Transparency for the layer copied to.

When you say "copy," you are talking about opening a GIF, selecting all, copying to the Clipboard, then pasting it into another image, right?

Right.

If so, you must convert the GIF to RGB color (Image->Mode->RGB) before copying it to the Clipboard.

BTW, Thanks Tacit, for the reply.

OK, I’ve made sure that it’s set to RGB after opening it, but still I’m not getting what I’m expecting. I must be missing something fundamental – let me walk through what I’m doing and see if you see where I’m going off track…

I’ve got a B&W gif where the white background is set to the transparent color. I can confirm that via MS Paint->Image->Attributes and via Microsoft Photo Editor (comes up with checkerboard BG).

I open it in PS – it doesn’t show the checkerboard BG and I can’t select Preserve Transparency for it in Layers – no sign that it has a transparent color or that I can select the transparent color. (Not that I was expecting any, just thought I’d mention it in case I’m missing something.) I select all and copy that to the clipboard.

I create a new image with Contents Background color (Red) and paste the previous image. The background is completely overwritten. Still no sign of transparency. I export to Gif and it won’t let me select a transparency color. I flatten the image and save as Tif and when re-loaded, still no sign of transparency (I still get a B&W image vs the red and black, that I’m expecting).

I’m not really trying to create a GIF with transparency – I already have that, I’m trying to paste a transparent gif onto a background image and have the background show through. This I’m beating my head against.

I have found a plugin that let’s me do this with limited success – it’s called the Eliminate White filter and works A) so long as the BG is white (obviously) and B) so long as I only try it on one gif…if I have more than one gif pasted onto my background, it doesn’t work on the 2nd (or more) gif, but I haven’t explored that problem much further. I assume now that since there’s a plugin to handle this "problem", it’s more complicated than I first assumed, no?

I suspect the problem is that you’re moving it through too many programs and it’s only truly transparent in the one it was created in. Try opening the .gifs in Photoshop and then "save for web" with transparent color set. Then try placing the new gif on a background in photoshop. This from About.com:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/library/extra/blfund_bitmap.ht m Bitmap images in general do not inherently support transparency. A couple of specific formats — namely GIF and PNG — support transparency. In addition, most image editing programs support transparency, but only when the image is saved in the software program’s native format. A common misconception is that the transparent areas in an image will remain transparent when an image is saved to another format or copied and pasted into another program. That just doesn’t work; however, there are techniques for hiding or blocking out areas in a bitmap that you intend to use in other software. For more information about retaining transparency in bitmap images, see Removing the Background.

http://www.madmousergraphics.com
web design, print design, photography

(LauraK) wrote in
news::

I suspect the problem is that you’re moving it through too many programs and it’s only truly transparent in the one it was created in. Try opening the .gifs in Photoshop and then "save for web" with transparent color set. Then try placing the new gif on a background in photoshop. This from About.com:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/library/extra/blfund_bitmap.ht m Bitmap images in general do not inherently support transparency. A couple of specific formats — namely GIF and PNG — support transparency. In addition, most image editing programs support transparency, but only when the image is saved in the software program’s native format. A common misconception is that the transparent areas in an image will remain transparent when an image is saved to another format or copied and pasted into another program. That just doesn’t work; however, there are techniques for hiding or blocking out areas in a bitmap that you intend to use in other software. For more information about retaining transparency in bitmap images, see Removing the Background.
http://www.madmousergraphics.com
web design, print design, photography

Laura, thanks – yes I was suffering from that misconception – but I knew there was some kind of issue there because flipping between the different programs that I use would change the selected transparancy color and I couldn’t figure out why. I guess I know why now. The good news is that I got PS 7.0 in the mail today (I’ve been suffering with 5.0 LE which is totally braindamaged) and 7.0 is working the way I’ve been expecting 5.0 LE too. I’m now able to copy and paste on top of my background, so long as the gif originally has the correct color set to transparent. And it’s obvious if that’s the case cause when I open the gif, then the background for the gif is displayed as transparent.

Now, all would be well if PS 7.0 would stop crashing my PC everytime I try to work in 1200 DPI mode with a large psd file – or open an eps and try to convert it to 300 DPI from 72 DPI. Crash, crash, crash…this is getting old.

Laura, thanks – yes I was suffering from that misconception – but I knew there was some kind of issue there because flipping between the different programs that I use would change the selected transparancy color and I couldn’t figure out why. I guess I know why now.

The problem is not the number of programs; GIF transparency is a part of the standard, and any program that supports the standard supports transparent GIFs supports transparent GIFs.

The problem was your version of Photoshop. Photoshop did not support opening transparent GIFs and preserving transparency until version 5.5; earlier versions did not display the transparency when opening a GIF.

Now, all would be well if PS 7.0 would stop crashing my PC everytime I try to work in 1200 DPI mode with a large psd file – or open an eps and try to convert it to 300 DPI from 72 DPI. Crash, crash, crash…this is getting old.

Photoshop is a remarkably stable program. Crashes in Photoshop almost always indicate a problem somewhere else. The most common causes of Photoshop crashes are:

– Not enough RAM, or defective RAM;
– Corrupt fonts on your computer;
– Corrupt ICC profiles on your computer;
– A damaged hard disk directory, or a problem with the hard drive.

—
Rude T-shirts for a rude age: http://www.villaintees.com Art, literature, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more:
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(Tacit) wrote in
news::

Laura, thanks – yes I was suffering from that misconception – but I knew there was some kind of issue there because flipping between the different programs that I use would change the selected transparancy color and I couldn’t figure out why. I guess I know why now.

The problem is not the number of programs; GIF transparency is a part of the standard, and any program that supports the standard supports transparent GIFs supports transparent GIFs.

That particular problem that I was seeing, if I can call it that, and I think it supports directly the article that Laura referenced, is Program A (MS Paint, for instance) saves my gif with transparent BG set to white, and I load it it Program B (IranView, for instance) and white is no longer the transparent color, but is instead black. That’s from a look at the palette. Transparent color index should have been 0 but was 1, or vice versa. Just a quirk of how some of the apps handle transparency and the color palette index, I guess.

The problem was your version of Photoshop. Photoshop did not support opening transparent GIFs and preserving transparency until version
5.5; earlier versions did not display the transparency when opening a
GIF.

I believe that completely. PS 5.0 is just a teaser, but came free with PageMaker, I guess.

Now, all would be well if PS 7.0 would stop crashing my PC everytime I try to work in 1200 DPI mode with a large psd file – or open an eps and try to convert it to 300 DPI from 72 DPI. Crash, crash, crash…this is getting old.

Photoshop is a remarkably stable program. Crashes in Photoshop almost always indicate a problem somewhere else. The most common causes of Photoshop crashes are:

– Not enough RAM, or defective RAM;
– Corrupt fonts on your computer;
– Corrupt ICC profiles on your computer;
– A damaged hard disk directory, or a problem with the hard drive.

Y, I believe that – wish I could pinpoint it though. Haven’t had a crash in forever until I installed 7.0 today. Now it crashes early and often. I’d suspect memory, but I swapped my memory cards around that didn’t solve anything – not that that’s a guarantee.

Fonts,..possible,

ICC profile…well, that’s very possible. I have a case here that consistently crashes – where I open an eps and set the DPI to 300 (from 72). For some reason, when I do that with color set to CMYK, it crashes. I just tried it with it set to RGB and it didn’t crash. Not sure why it would only happen when I go from 72 DPI to 300, but still interesting. Does PS install new ICC profiles, or do I need to look elsewhere to update them?

Damaged HD, again, possible – I was suspecting one of my scratch disks so I switched to a couple of others, but still have the problem.

Anonymoose <menolikeyspam> wrote in
news::

ICC profile…well, that’s very possible. I have a case here that consistently crashes – where I open an eps and set the DPI to 300 (from 72). For some reason, when I do that with color set to CMYK, it crashes. I just tried it with it set to RGB and it didn’t crash. Not sure why it would only happen when I go from 72 DPI to 300, but still interesting. Does PS install new ICC profiles, or do I need to look elsewhere to update them?

Just installed the latest and greatest ICC profiles from Adobe, still crashing with CMYK, but not with RGB. Could still be a random memory problem though, just not tripping over it with RGB.

Damaged HD, again, possible – I was suspecting one of my scratch disks so I switched to a couple of others, but still have the problem.

Just installed the latest and greatest ICC profiles from Adobe, still crashing with CMYK, but not with RGB. Could still be a random memory problem though, just not tripping over it with RGB.

Try defragging your hard drive and checking your registry. Also clear all caches. Make sure the scratch disk has a lot of room on it — a couple of gigs at least. And that you’ve got plenty of room on the hard drive — 5-10G. The LE5 you were using was an earlier version of Elements, the stripped down version of PS. It came free with a lot of scanners and such. The full version you’ve got now is very memory intensive. You can’t even compare the two. It’s like going from Windows 3.1 to XP. I’d suggest putting in a new, large hard drive. Start with a fresh format of Windows. Take out the old hard drive and stick it in a USB/Firewire case and access stuff off it when you need it.

http://www.madmousergraphics.com
web design, print design, photography

Thanks for all suggestions as to what’s wrong with my PS and PC…I got desperate enough to search for the error message that occasionally popped up when it crashed and found the problem documented here:

http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm/method=messa ges&threadid=9666&forumid=5

seems my Dell Optiplex GX1 gets stressed when PS works the memory too hard. Looks like the solution is to disable the PS hardware extensions…or buy another PC.

Slow or crash? Slow or crash? Guess I’ll go with Slow for now.