Crop canvas to selection

[dpollock]

I am new to photoshop pro. I guess I was a bit spoiled in MS digital image. There was a "crop canvas to selection" command which enabled me to crop a shape (e.g. circle, star, etc.) and then save it as a gif or png file, where only the selection would exist - there would be no annoying white edges in a square around my selection. In psp, when I use the selection tool and then choose "crop to selection" I cannot save the result (as a gif, png or anything else) without saving the white edges that make us the square. I cannot save simply the selection itself. Surely there is a way to do this simply? Any ideas???

[LeviFiction]

After cropping to the selection Invert the selection and hit Delete to clear the area around the original selection.

When saving out the PNG or GIF you need to hit the Options button in the save dialog. And it will ask you how you want to save transparency. You can either save it with a single color transparency or using the current transparent areas of the image.

It's pretty simple.

[dpollock]

I appreciate your help. I still need a bit of advice. After I use the selection tool to create a circle, and then hit "crop to selection" I get the crop with white borders making up a square. At that point when I go to the Selections menu and then to the invert command, it is grayed out and cannot be used. I have found a way to get where I want to go but it is complicated and I am thinking surely there is a better way. My way is this: select a circular part of the pic, click on "crop to selection," go to the "background eraser tool", and use it on a small portion of one of the white outside areas. Then I have to do another circle with the selection tool (inside the original circle) and then again hit "crop to selection." At this point I get my circular pic with the checkerboard border which tells me I can save it as a png or gif and won't get the white border around the edges. This works, but it is cumbersome and considerably more trouble than I need to go through when I use other photo-editors. What am I missing?

[Tim Morrison]

Before you do the Crop to Selection, click Layers > Promote Background Layer. Then Crop to Selection will work the way you want.
Crop to Selection works differently for background layers and normal raster layers. For a background layer, the area outside the selection is filled with the current background material. Presumably your background material is set to plain white. For normal layers the area outside the selection is made transparent.
In nearly all cases when you open an image it will only have a background layer. Background layers can't support transparency so they need to be converted to a normal raster layer, using Layers > Promote Background Layer, before you execute Crop to Selection.

[dpollock]

thanks, Tim. That does the job, and in a simple manner. Not to try your patience, but I have one other question. When I open up the corel paintshop project creator, and go to one of the projects like collage or card, it shows me a menu screen which has four folders to choose photos from: Computer, User, Libraries, and Homegroup. Each of these has a sideways triangle on the left side, which normally I should be able to click on to go deeper into the subfolders. However nothing happens when I click on any of these shapes. The only way I can choose photos for my projects is to place them on my desktop or one of the three other main folders listed. I can't go looking for pics anywhere else on my computer. When I first noticed this I thought the program must not have installed correctly so I reinstalled it but still the same problem. Do you know what's causing this?

[Kathy_9]

I don't have a solution for you but I can tell you that what you described is not normal behavior for that program. I just opened Project Creator to verify as I don't remember running into this issue. I saw the same selections as you but I was able to click on the "triangle" and navigate anywhere I needed to on my system.

Maybe someone will come along with an answer.

[Tim Morrison]

I'm sorry but I don't know what could be causing that. On this computer the triangles work as expected... it's an XP machine so I just see My Computer and My Documents.

[wds937]

When I open up the corel paintshop project creator, and go to one of the projects like collage or card, it shows me a menu screen which has four folders to choose photos from: Computer, User, Libraries, and Homegroup. Each of these has a sideways triangle on the left side, which normally I should be able to click on to go deeper into the subfolders. However nothing happens when I click on any of these shapes.

If clicking the arrow does not open or expand the folder, try double-clicking the folder name. You may have to wait a few seconds; Project Creator is not known for its speed in this area.

From the (My)Computer folder, you should be able to navigate to any folder that contains your photos.