Understanding Layers and Transparency

[Mike Bianco]

I am trying to design a custom printed shirt and I downloaded a PSD template file from jakprints.com to create it. The template has two layers and they tell you not to modify them - just add new layers with your content.

The shirt I want to get printed is very simple - a basic color fade from yellow to purple, and then my company logo printed on the right breast area. I have separate graphic files for each. I created a new layer and pasted the fade in. Then I opened my logo, which is a png file with a transparent background. I want the logo on top of the color fade graphic. However, when I paste it, I always get a white background rather than the transparent one that I want.

I have tried the following:
- Paste as new selection
- Paste as new Transparent Selection
- I have tried using the "Lock transparency" property on the layer
- I have a PDF vector version of the logo, and I tried pasting that into a new vector layer, but that didn't work either.

I am sure that I have some basic misunderstanding of how transparency works. I tried googling this to learn more about if, but I could not find anything I found helpful.

Any thoughts? Direct help or just pointing me to some good docs to read on this would be greatly appreciated. The Paint Shop help files were not very helpful. More how to vs basic understanding.

Thanks

Mike

[LeviFiction]

There is no need to paste as new selection or transparent selection. Just paste it as a new layer. Then the logo gains full independence from anything else. You can resize it, move it, adjust it, endlessly with the pick tool.

Only other thing I can think of is if the PNG uses color indexes instead of an actual alpha channel to show its transparency. To check that you can look at the image's color depth. If it's 256 index color instead of an RGB 8-bit/channel image then you most likely have an indexed transparency.

[Mike Bianco]

Thanks for the quick reply. The logo image does have a 256 color palette. In order to set palette transparency, Paint Shop forces you to reduce the color depth to 256. That is no matter what format the file is in. I also have the logo as a .PSP file (native PaintShop format), which is how I created it originally. It also has a 256 color palette. If I increase that to 8 bit, the transparency disappears, and if I try to set it again, PaintShop says "Image must be converted to a 256 color palette".

And I did try pasting the image as a new layer also. Same thing, it winds up with a white background rather than retaining the transparency.

[LeviFiction]

Palette transparency does requires the image be 256 color. But normal transparency, PNG can do normal alpha channel transparency, does not. The only reason to use palette transparency is if some program or system requires that method.

Transparency is built into raster layers (background layers are not transparent) when you save an image as a PNG or PSPImage file it should automatically take the layer's transparency and use that as the alpha channel of the image so you can use full colored images.

Here is a script I made to convert a 256 color image with Transparency into a full color transparent image. It's not something PSP does automatically.

http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php?f=104&t=61511

To run just place it into your Scripts-Restricted folder, open the image you want to convert, choose this script from the script toolbar, and hit run. Once it's run you'll be left with an image with full transparency that you can simply copy and paste as a new layer into your template.

[Mike Bianco]

Thanks! That worked great. However, I have a lot to learn here. I'm reading a bit about the alpha channel now. This was definitely something I didn't know about at all. Still not sure I understand how normal alpha channel transparency works in PSP, but I'll keep reading. If you know of any good explanations / tutorials, please let me know.