Odd Selection behavior

[ehume]

For years I used PSP as my companion. I would use a raw converter and save to tif files. I would then pick up the tif file in PSP, outputting jpg files. Never saw this behavior. Here is a jpg derived from a tif file:

Colorado Vacation 032-small from tif.jpg (52.09 KiB) Viewed 1666 times

I produced this first by making an arbitrary selection, then by pressing the Del key. In the Materials palette, the color was Transparent. Then I went to a pspimage:

Moon from pspimage.jpg (31.76 KiB) Viewed 1666 times

This is what I expected! It shows the app is behaving properly. . . . Wait a minute. JPG's are not supposed to support transparencies. How come this image shows up with transparencies on PSP?

So then I went back to a raw file, outputted in tif, saved to png, which does support transparency. Then I made an arbitrary selection, then I pressed the Del key. The background color was set to Transparency. This is a png file, so the selection should not be black, but it is:

Toby from raw to tif.png (348.42 KiB) Viewed 1666 times

So what am I doing wrong, all of a sudden?

[Jean-Luc]

Is it related to the background color in the Materials Palette?

[ehume]

Is it related to the background color in the Materials Palette?

Yes. I changed the background color, then switched it to Transparent, then drew a selection rectangle, then press DEL. Result: colored instead of deleted rectangle.

[lata]

Same for PSP X7
You have drawn a selection, press Ctrl+ D to remove the selection

[ehume]

Same for PSP X7
You have drawn a selection, press Ctrl+ D to remove the selection

Same for PSP7, ditto PSPx7. I always used ctrl-Z, but ctrl-D works just as well. The problem is, it deletes only the selection box, not the contents.
Interesting: it only works the way I remember it working when I have pasted something on a canvas made from a new file.

[hartpaul]

The problem here is you are confusing the properties boxes with the color boxes and also the difference between a Background layer and a Raster layer.

Note that to have a layer show transparency it must be a raster layer and not a background layer.
Deleting anything on a background layer will always show the background color (not the appearance shown in the Background and Fill Properties box) even if you are using a texture gradient or pattern.
My first image shows the boxes as lheir labels appear

So using the delete key will show the background color in this case blue

02backgroundresult.jpg (54.66 KiB) Viewed 1583 times

Now if I start again and this time right click the layer and Promote Background layer I get this

and the result of hitting the Delete key is transparency.

04FromRaster.jpg (57.93 KiB) Viewed 1583 times

This is normal behaviour for all versions of PSP back to at least Jasc PSP8 which is the earliest version I have.

[ehume]

Thank you Jean-Luc. I knew I was doing something wrong.

Indeed this is how all PSPs work. PSP7 does the same thing.

Edit: PSP4 does not seem to have layers. PSP5 does, and the background layer can be promoted to a raster layer. The Select tool and the Del key work in the manner you have demonstrated. The copyright is 1991-1999. I expect layers were added in 1999, since PSP4 did not have them, and that was copyright 1997.

[hartpaul]

You are correct in that layers was introduced in PSP5.
The list of earlier versions and when things were introduced is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_P ... o_releases

[ehume]

You are correct in that layers was introduced in PSP4.
The list of earlier versions and when things were introduced is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_P ... o_releases

I think you mean PSP5: (from the Wikipedia article (thank you)): PSP5 "Adds support for layers editing, . . . . "