Colour mode conversion with transparency

Hi,
Why am I loosing my transparent background (converting as solid white) when I convert an image from RGB to CMYK. I selected transparent background when I set up the document and changed colour mode through image>mode>CMYK. What am I doing wrong?

Great thanks! I just save as TIFF instead of JPG and ticked save transparent info which seems to be working. Not sure how I flattened it.

Similar Messages

Organizing colour mode for print in Illustrator

Hi,
I want to set up my document as a two-colour for print. I'm not really sure what is the correct swatch library to choose, if there is such a thing. Either way, i selected Pantone Solid Uncoated as my swatch library. I chose two colours from this and applied them to all aspects of my document. However, the document colour mode is still set to the default CMYK, and my only other choice is RGB. My question is, how do I organize my document to be 2-colour pantone print ready?
Regards,
Erin.

I'm not really sure what is the correct swatch library to choose, if there is such a thing.
Erin,
You don't have to use a so-called "Color Book" Swatch Library at all to define a spot color. You can set up the on-screen appearance of a color any way you want (using RGB or CMYK values) and simply define it as a Spot Color. You can also name a spot color anything you want. And you can do this in either a CMYK or RGB document.
The truth is, a spot color is nothing but grayscale values sent to a single color separation plate.
For example: Suppose you just don't find Illustrator's onscreen display a convincing rendition of Pantone Metallic 875. You can simply create a new swatch, adjust its CMYK or RGB sliders to something that does look like 875 on screen, set that Swatch to Spot, and name it "Pantone 875 Spot."
Different example: Suppose you are building a 5-color (process plus 1 spot) glossy brochure (a very common practice). The client's logotype color spec is Pantone 875 metallic. You want occurrances of the logo and the company's tag line to overprint in that ink. But you also need to simulate the logotype color in product illustrations that will occur in the brochure. You have learned from experience (read tests) that even Pantone's own recommendation for CMYK simulation of 875 does not yield a satisfying or convincing simulation in print. In this case, you might simply define the CMYK values that you consider satisfying for simulating 875 in CMYK artwork, name that Swatch "Pantone 875 Process", duplicate that Swatch, change it to Spot, and rename it "Pantone 875 Spot." When you print seps, you'll still get seps named Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, and Pantone 875 Spot.
It's all-too-easy (and all-too-frequent in this forum) to just toss out off-the-top "feature requests." It's quite another thing to actually think it through before doing so. Illustrator does not need a separate "spot color mode."
Spot color is, by definition, for print, as is CMYK. They are just elements of the same color-separation process. Spot color is quite commonly combined with CMYK process. It would be patently ridiculous to require changing a document from CMYK to Spot Color just to use spot color. Spot color swatches are used every day in CMYK documents for everything ranging from the 5-color artwork described above to varnishes and spot liquid lamination.
Even Illustrator's distinction between CMYK and RGB Document Color Modes has more to do with maintaining onscreen display of color than with any mechanical or workflow necessity. Other programs don't do that. You don't see "CMYK vs. RGB" documents in Draw, FreeHand, Canvas. In any mainstream drawing program, you can define RGB and/or CMYK and/or spot colors all day long in the same document. Users have been doing this just fine for literal decades. I have decades of project archives to proove it.
Now, something that would be both useful and genuinely innovative in vector programs (and befitting the industry's sometimes overblown focus on onscreen color calibration) is onscreen consideration of the real-world opacity of inks. Fact is, even with all of Illustrator's hair-splitting focus on color-calibration profiles, etc., etc., it (and all other programs like it) does a pathetic job of making a reasonable onscreen representation of spot inks. Understand--this is not a matter of color model "mode"; it's a matter of overcoming the effective assumption that there is only one kind of "printing" in the world, i.e., offset printing with translucent inks.
Example: Set up a process-color job that will be printed not on white paper, but on a dark substrate. The illustration is, say, a dinosaur. You, the illustrator (remember? the name of this program is "Illustrator") intend to use yellow ink as a highlight that overprints some darker green. You know this will work, because you know that the yellow spot ink you have specified is much more opaque than the translucency of ordinary CMYK offset process inks that Illustrator always assumes. Suppose that in addition to this, you intend to use an opaque white ink in the design; or a metallic. Turn on the so-called "overprint preview" feature and you'll see that Illustrator (and programs like it)--with all its painstaking focus on onscreen color calibration and gee-whiz "transparency"--is completely incapable of convincingly displaying this common scenario--used everyday on everything from T-shirts to lunch boxes. The fact is, illustration programs are used every day as workflow production tools for much broader applications than just offset printing and web pages. There's silkscreen, signage, embroidery, flexography, etc.
A spot ink is nothing more than a user-defined ink--a process separation plate other than the common four. Stating that Illustrator 'needs a Spot Color mode' is confusing spot color with line art. Spot color is as much a part of process separation as it can be part of line art. Providing the user the ability to specify the real-world opacity of the user-defined ink in the real-world printing method being targeted would be a truly useful feature.
Understand: This is not pie-in-the-sky. It can already be done (and commonly is) in Photoshop, because Photoshop correlates Channels to inks, and you can define as many additional channels as you want, and you can individually set their opacity. The onscreen display properly reflects the real-world opacity without wrecking the real-world separations.
So just think of a spot color Swatch as an additional user-defined process INK. Think of the various spot color Libraries as mere preset conveniences.
You could define a spot color Swatch named "Pantone 875" that looks purple on screen if you had some desire to do so. It would still print correctly so long as the printing house put Pantone 875 INK in the press--which is what they'll do if the separation plate says "Pantone 875"--which is what it will if you name the spot ink that way.
Also: Assuming you have the Adobe PDF virtual printer installed (which you probably do), to test your spot color separations you can simply invoke the Print dialog, select Adobe PDF as the "printer" and select Separations in the Output pane. The resulting PDF will contain one grayscale page for each INK.
JET

Printing colour recognition issue with illustrator created design.

I have a macbook pro with retina display and illustrator Cs 6.
For some reason, when I tried to print my illustrator designed work at the professional printing service.
it said there are colour recognition issue. I wasn't sure if that is anything to do with the Illustrator Cs6 or to do with the retina display or the printing service.
I would like to know if anyone have the same issue, and how do you resolve it.
Thanks.

Ahhh,
The colour mode is websafe HEX is the design work by the looks of it and the print is using CMYK mode. Try changing the document's colour mode to CMYK from RGB and see if the blue looks darker. It should do.
Take a look at the image I've attached. I've created both RGB and CMYK variations of the hex colour #0099BA.
I think it's just down to a difference in colour mode between digital version and print. There are some really great comparison sites available that will give you a close conversion if your matching spot and PANTONE® colours too.
Let me know if your any closer to a resolution please. Interested to see what the issue is.

Problems with transparency in interactive PDFs

Hi, I am creating a 40pp document in InDesign CS6. The document is created as CMYK and will be issued as a printed piece but also there is an interactive version. For revision control purposes, I have created one document for both purposes, and have created the interactivity (internal navigation as well as hyperlinks to external URLs). The interactive buttons are on a separate layer so that layer can be suppressed when output for press.
The printed piece exports just fine using Pass4Press settings.
However, when I export as an interactive PDF, I find that each page seems to render differently, despite being based on the same master page items.
I have tried everything – changing the transparency blend space from RGB to CMYK (and vice versa).
This is causing me a real headache as my client won't accept this and I have tried pretty much everything. There is very little to adjust in the interactive PDF settings.
The document has a photographic strip along the top of each page (master item). On top of this are coloured blocks with text in them with the name of each section. The blocks are set to "colour" mode, (except when that is the current section, when they become "normal"). This is all done on the master, yet each page renders differently despite it being the same master with no page over-rides on the items in question.
I tried exporting back to .IDML and using the export functions of CS4 and CS5.5. This solved the transparency issue, but caused a whole range of other problems such as text reflow, shifting images and incorrectly assigned button actions/bookmarks, so the problem would seem to be the CS6 interactive PDF transparency handling. Using an earlier version of InDesign clearly isn't a solution.
Can anyone help please?!!

Hi, and thanks for your help. That would be a bit of a faff, as I have set the whole doc up for export as a Pass4Press compliant document for professional print. However, the client also wants a navigable PDF created from the same doc. Because of the length of the document, I don't want to have two source docs, as that would be a revision control nightmare.
However, I've been playing around with the master pages, as it is items from the masters that are being rendered inconsistently. It seems odd that one master can be rendered differently on various non-overridden pages.
Guess what? I just tried disassociating the items from the masters (Override All Master Page Items) and tried again. Now, although I now have lost the benefit of using master pages, it does actually render properly and consistently now! Go figure. Must be one of those freaky little bugs. It would be cool if this could be fixed, but at least overriding masters seems to be a workaround.
Hopefully, my document is approved, and I can export the final Press PDF, save the doc, Override All Master Page Items, export the interactive PDF and not save with the disassociated masters…
Thanks for all advice and hopefully this will help someone else, or trigger one of the devs to look into this odd bug.

How do i export a flash movie as an animated gif with transparent background?

each export has the background in it.
I have looked into the publish setting for gif but no option there, or in the background colour setting in the main design window has any Alpha or Transparency setting.

Thought that issue went away. The only workaround I found was exporting a PNG sequence with transparency, importing it all back into a better animated GIF exporter like Fireworks as an image sequence and exporting it from there again. It will give you the best quality, control over the timeline, looping and various per-frame AGIF functionality.
But yes, it's a multi-step headache.

Is there a way to format multiple images at once? Change colour mode or resolution?

Is there a way to format multiple images at once? Change colour mode or resolution?

It's very easy to make an action.
Go to window > actions
In the actions panel, simply click the 'create a new action' button, it starts recording as soon as you've created it (when you've given it a name).
Now you can apply the changes you want to make to the images on the file you have opened.
After you've done all you need to do. You click the 'stop' button. The action is now ready to use. And you can apply the changes you made on all the other files.
Then you can continue how gener7 explained.
I usually include a save and close command, so that the whole batch doesn't end up opened after running the script.
But if you do that you have to create a new file, and save it to your computer before you start recording the action, otherwise the save command will be replaced by each file. And you'll end up with one edited file in the end. At least for as far as I know!

Changes to appearance of repeat swatch and gradient (both with transparency applied) when .ai saved in PDF 1.3 compatibility

I need to send a complex vector print to a commercial printer who requires my .ai file to be saved as 1.3 PDF compatibility. All the graphics display & print correctly bar two elements:
1. A gradient with transparency applied
2. A repeat pattern swatch with transparency applied
Both of these elements are layered between a solid colour background and a complex array of vector art.
The gradient displays as solid white when converted to 1.3 PDF. The pattern swatch displays partly white, with some elements of the pattern repeat visible as a watermark.
1. I have tried to rasterise these elements within the a@rt, and while they both display correctly while in .ai format, as soon as I convert to PDF the appearance changes as above.
2. I have tried to apply the transparency to the paint buckets on the gradient slider instead of applying it to the shape with gradient fil
3. I've fiddled with the Transparency Flattening presets, Document Raster Effect Settings, and everything I can think of in the 'Save as PDF' dialogue box
4. I've tried to rasterise the full file with an even worse outcome (all colour information lost, appears only on grey scale with fewer elements visible)
Could this have something to do with spot colours or overprint? Any help would be most appeciated!
I'm using:
Illustrator CC 18.1.1 (doc colour set to CMYK)
on a Macbook Pro OSX Yosemite Version 10.10.1
Apple Preview Version 8.0 (859)

Hi Mike,
Thanks for taking an interest! I tried rebuilding my gradient as suggested to see whether it would make a difference, but was still having issues. Tried to save every which way with the save as PDF options in 1.3 profile. Finally went back into the file to unpack each layer and see what I could adjust to save the appearance.
Found this fix in my swatches palette: for some reason the swatches I was working with had converted to "Book Colour", something I never use. I changed the dropdown back to CMYK and changed the colours from spot to process, which fixed the file Relief after hours of searching and late nights!
Thanks again!

Flattening PDF with transparency becomes large PDF

Hi,
I have an issue with a PDF file created from Photoshop. The PDF file contains transparency settings.
When I create the PDF from Photoshop with a setting that flattens transparency (such as PDFX1a2001), the resulting PDF is flat and fairly small in size.
If I create the PDF from Photoshop with a setting that preserves transparency (such as High Quality Print), the file is also small in size. However, if I use this same PDF and flatten it, by printing it once more as a PDF with a setting such as PDFX1a2001 (PDF to PDF), the file becomes enormous. And Acrobat even rasterises embedded fonts which I don't understand!
I believe the problem has nothing to do with Photoshop, but Acrobat is the culprit (the same thing happened with Illustrator instead of Photoshop).
Has anybody come across a similar issue, and/or what do you suggest I try as a workaround?
Thanks.
PS: My initial goal was to use the PDF with the transparency as a watermark into a second PDF and then flatten the resulting PDF into a new PDF. This last, flat, PDF becomes very large in size and even has fonts rasterised.
But the problem can be isolated to the operation of flattening the PDF containing transparency, as described above.
Update:
The problem described occurred with Acrobat Distiller 9.0.0.
I tried using Acrobat Distiller 8.1.0, and that worked! The watermark with transparency got embedded in the pdf, and the resulting pdf had a standard file size. I do see a very thin border around the watermark however which appears and disappears depending on the zoom.
1- Any solution on how to fix this problem for Acrobat Distiller 9.0.0?
2- Is the thin border appearing around the watermark (with Distiller 8) an artifact or will it be seen on print?

hi, I've just come across this looking for an answer to a related issue. You may have already found your answers, 1 year later, but in case you're still curious:
the small hairlines around the flattened watermark are what Adobe calls "atomic regions." For transparent type, or any vector shape with a transparency effect (e.g. drop shadow) to be flattened into the artwork behind it, it needs to be rastered into a bitmap to burn it into a single object. The atomic regions are small slices of image where that vector-bitmap rastering happened. In virtually all cases you will not see that in print. (If you zoom in and it gets larger, then you may. It typically stays the same size or disappears.)
There's a host of settings in both versions of Acrobat (more in 9) wherein you can determine how much "extra" information gets carried into your file. Even after flattening within Acrobat, you can still optimize the file size by tossing all of that extra info. (go to Help menu and enter Reduce File Size)
What I suspect is happening is, when outputting a flattened X-1a from Photoshop, it's taking care of rastering the watermark into the image, creating a flattened file. (this is assuming you're not applying the watermark in Acrobat.) This is a single bitmap image.
If you're flattening say, an X-4 (unflattened) PDF with live transparency, or burning in an Acrobat watermark, Acrobat is creating more than a couple atomic regions (likely very many). These are several bitmap images, probably along with some other vector type—even if the glyphs stay vector (no transparency affecting them) they are no longer type, but vector objects, if any other part of the copy was rasterized. Acrobat may even be doing you the favor of keeping the text it converted in an invisible layer above the image. (It does this with OCR conversions.)
Text is text, with font attributes applied, and takes up very little room in a document. Text partially converted to bitmaps and vectors can no longer be read in the file as text (exporting, assistive devices, etc.). If, as I suspect, Acrobat is rastering some of the type, it's preserving the text in the file so it can still be read and exported. (This is just a hypothesis on my part.)
All of the various little images in the atomic regions, partially rastered type, plus any overhead garbage Acrobat saw fit to add to your file can increase the file size drastically.
My advice? Either create a PDF and leave the Acrobat watermark alone (there are reasons), or if you have to flatten it—because you're submitting a PDF/X-1a-compliant file for press that needs to have a transparent watermark—flatten the image in Photoshop, then export your PDF.

How to use/create icons with transparent background ?

I would like to use icons with transparent background on JButtons, but I can't find how to do it. Until now, I've been using the ImageIcon class to create icons from GIF images. These images were created with MSPaint (sorry, I don't know what I could have used instead of that). Here is how I create my buttons :
bPencil = new JButton(new ImageIcon("Pencil.GIF"));What could I do to make the background transparent and/or what software could I use instead of M$Paint ?
P.S. : sorry if my question seems silly, but I'm a newbie in Java coding...

Transparent images are GIF (256 colours) and PNG (true-colour, half transparency).
You can store the image with your code, *.class files. You then even can deliver all inside a clickable, executable .jar file.
This kind of usage is called "resource," and hence use getResource like this:
    java.net.URL imgURL = getClass().getResource("pencil.gif");
    ImageIcon icon = null;
    if (imgURL != null) {
        icon = new ImageIcon(imgURL, description);
    }You can use paths.
There exist versions of MSPaint that easily loose their transparent colour on saving.
For GIFs try internet palettes, or try to save as PNG (recent version).
Start with a transparent image from elsewhere.

Yet another bug in Photoshop CS3: Lab Colour Mode

Using Photoshop CS3 Standard (english) on Windows XP SP2, I cannot switch to Lab colour mode. Or rather, I can, but the image will turn completely black. In the channels palette in Lab mode, there are four channels: L, a, b, and Lab. The three single channels obviously contain the correct data, and I can select each one and the display will show the correct greyscale representations of the L channel, the a channel, and the b channel. But it won't show the colour image of all channels combined, i. e. the Lab image; this will appear simply black instead.
Fortunately, I still have Photoshop CS2 installed. So due to this and numerous other bugs (particularly the §@#!& printing) I am using Bridge 2.1 and ACR 4.1 but not Photoshop CS3. This application is just too buggy to get serious work done :(
-- Olaf

The exact same thing happened to me just 2 days ago. It was the first time I had ever tried LAB, in any version of PS, and all I got was the black box. I switched to my earlier version (PS7 in this case) and tried it, thinking that maybe my computer wouldn't support it for some reason, since it's several years old. PS7 displayed LAB just fine... I went back to CS3 (I had closed it down completely) and when it restarted - it LAB worked correctly, BUT all my preferences had been reset to default! So, I agree with the previous poster who commented that it may be a preferences thing. You should also check the color management settings in your earlier version & make sure the CS3 has the same settings. I have no idea if that made a difference or not, but I did notice that my CS3 didn't have the same color settings as PS7 did. Try resetting preferences to default, shutting down CS3 and restarting, and then check to see if CS3 will display LAB correctly.

Export with transparent background and opacity

Apologies if these questions are a little basic , but taking my first steps in motion after playing with imovie , FCE and live type for a while
I have started to get a rough idea of motions capabilities but a couple of questions still are puzzling me .
In live type I created graphics , lower thirds etc with an alpha (transparent background) , for use in PIC in PIC in I movie , how do I do this in Motion , everything saved comes up with a background colour despite my canvas being set to transparent ?
Also opacity does not seem to show up at all , all my saved movies with layers with opacity changes (ie not 100%) show those layers as solids with no fading .
Any ideas where I am going wrong ?
Any answers or advice gratefully received with thanks

When you Share your creation you must select a movie standard with transparency - in Motion 4 you selected any option with Millions of Colors+ where the + was transparency.
In Motion 5 if you have transparency selected for your background already then when you export select "Current Settings" on the Export drop down selection which is normally default.
Alan

Saving image and layer separately with transparent background

I have a photo with a layer and I am trying to save two images (main photo and layer) with transparent background. I am able to save the main photo with transparent background but somehow not able to save the layer with transparent background despite selecting the option while saving as PNG. Any help will be appreciated?

OK... I'm probably not being clear.
When I import the PDF, I get a typical architect's line drawing as shown below. So the background is displaying as white. In Corel, when you save a GIF or a PNG, you can specify that -everything- that is the 'background colour' is rendered as transparent. IOW: there's no need to erase the 'white' pixels; they are auto-magically converted to transparent.
But in PS (CS4), no matter what I try, the rendered PNG or GIFs show as white, rather than transparent.
Is there a way to have this same behaviour in PS? Or do I first have to use the erase or background erase tools to get rid of the white?

Photoshop image with transparent bg not transparent in FCP

My psd images with transparent backgrounds (done correctly) are showing up with white backgrounds when I import them into FCP. How can this be remedied? please let me know!

i have a .psd and a .tif file..how do i switch it to 8-bit? i think its grayscale mode right now and the option for 8bit is grayed out and not clickable

7mins long 1080p footage with transparency placed over webcams image

Dear All,
I'm working on a flash project, where a 7 minutes long 25fps hd footage (at the moment as a PNG sequence) placed over a webcam's image. Importing the png sequence went all right so far, but when I'm importing the last scene (last 2000 frames) Flash crashes. I guess it's because I've run out of memory (I have 32GB).
Does anybody know a way to
A - import HQ footage with transparency (is there a codec that has alpha and works well with flash)
B - to increase an FLV's max bitrate
C - easily import a large amount of HD images (with transparency) without creating a 30+ gigabyte FLA file
Thank you in advance!

b (It took an hour to render a 6 min song. Is this normal, even though I've such a fast processor??)
With the number and type of filters you said you've added, that length of time doesn't sound out of the ballpark.
b I then placed the widescreen mask over the top of the nest. (FCP will only allow a max of 2min worth of graphics, so I copied it 3 times to fit over the whole song)
FCP has a wide screen matte filter that can be found in the EFFECTS tab in the Browser. It works by cropping the picture and the width and border (if needed) can be varied. You just drag it and drop it on top of the clip or nest in question.
b I then placed the widescreen mask over the top of the nest. I didn't have to render the mask and it played back fine. Unfortunately at each point where the mask met it caused a jump in frame on the nested track below.
You may have been able tyo watch the effect in real time, but it still needs rendering to play back 100% properly. The jumps you were seeing were most likely artifacts of RT viewing and would most likely have not been there after a COMPLETE render.
b A friend of mine has suggested exporting a Quick Time ref clip (not self contained) then importing it back into FCP.
This is one way of working and consolidants everything into one file. As long as you import this into a new sequence and keep your original, you can still rebuild anything you want by going back to the original sequence.
Finally, If you are doing any colour correction at all, you should be looking at a properly setup broadcast monitor to see what you are doing. Using the computer screen as a reference for colour is going to leave you very dissapointed when you view the final output on a television screen.
Good Luck
rh

How to make animations float with transparent background

I am taking a graduate course in adv. web design for an ed
tech program at a university. Neither my instructor nor anyone else
in my class knows how to get Flash animations to have a transparent
background, or even if this is possible. On behalf of us all, I am
wondering if it is possible to create a Flash animation without a
background--or with a transparent background, and then superimpose
it onto a web page so that the web page's background shows through
all but the animated part. We are using Flash 8. If it is possible,
can someone please tell us how to do it? I have seen web pages
where the animations float over the web page. Are these animations
made with Flash or with another program? Thank you!

Yes, it's easy, but haven't done it for a while, and not
since all the new ActiveX stuff on MS IE requires Java Script to
make the dotted outline go away.
To do it well takes a combination of Flash with the
publish-settings HTML Window Mode set to Transparent Windowless,
and tightly-designed CSS with your animation positioned in a div
that lies or overlays the exact place on the HTML page where you
want it. You can even have it scale to the entire visible window,
which can be quite cool. I did one for the holidays with snow
falling over an HTML page. It can block lnks from working, though,
so you can have the div (and animation) disappear when the
animation is done.

Colour mode conversion with transparency

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