Problems with 8bit png transparency

[bwscrapbooking]

Hello,

I am a digtal scrapbooking designer, and most of the scrapbook elements (buttons, tags, ribbons, other craft type looking ojects) are saved in png format, and to save the customer tie downloading my products I save them as PNG 8 with a transparency defined. The work I do is made is a variety of programs depending on what it is I am working on.

Now I had a customer come to me complaining that all the elements in the kit (zip file with many png and jpg files in it) she bought were coming up with grey and black backgrounds. So not being a PSP user I bought a copy of PSP x2 and confirmed my 8bit png files were not showing up with a transparent back ground. However the images saved as 24bit PNG showed correctly

So since I now had PSP X2 I took my 24 bit image and was going to export it as an 8bit with transparency. So I did the following:
1. loaded up the transparent PNG.
2. just to be safe, I create a #cccccc layer underneath. (did not merge the layers)
3. Then went to File>Export>PNG Optimizer.
4. Select "Palette-based" 128 color, select the "Optimized Octree" palette.
5. Then in the Transparency tab, selected "Single-color transparency", selected "Areas that match this color", and I made sure tolerance is 0.
6 Then I clicked the colored box, and enter "#CCCCCC" in the HTML code box.
7. waited for the preview to refresh and it showed the desired transaprency.
8. Then saved the file.

Now with my psp saved version I opened the new PNG file, bur what I get is my usual PNG file but with a visible grey background. What am I doing wrong? Is this a bug?

Thanks for your time

Jeff
jeff_werner@yahoo.com

[Tim Morrison]

Now with my psp saved version I opened the new PNG file, bur what I get is my usual PNG file but with a visible grey background. What am I doing wrong? Is this a bug?

PSP doesn't display palette based transparency by default. PSP is quite strict about showing the actual pixels in an image, and because the pixels are actually still there in a PNG or GIF with palette based transparency, PSP displays the grey pixels.
To see the transparency you need to either press Shift + V, or select Image > Palette > View Palette Transparency.

[bwscrapbooking]

Thanks Tim, your a big help.

Jeff