How do you make a layer transparent?

I know this probably should be obvious, but I can't figure it out. I have a .psd doc with a photo that has a lovely frame around it. I want to make the area where the photo is transparent so I can use the frame for other photos. When I bring the opacity down, the background is white, not transparent. Same when I use the eraser. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

The background is not a layer. It is the background. There is a subtle difference.
Make the image into a layer by double clicking the Background in the Layers palette. Then it will be made into a layer and you'll be able to make parts of it transparent, to where you can see the checkerboard (indicating transparency).
A transparent layer only allows you to "see through" to the layer(s) or background underneath. Make the background and/or lower layers invisible (click the eyeball icon) or delete them to be able to see the checkerboard pattern through the transparency of the layer above.
If you're trying to make a frame you can paste over other images, select the photo and delete the image out of the inside. Delete all other layers in the image, and save as Frame.psd or something. Then later you can open that image, copy the layer, and paste it over other images.
Hope this helps!
-Noel

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I have a picture of water splashing over a black background (like this:
although this isn't the exact one). By turning the blending mode to "screen", I get the effect I want: it basically looks like the water is splashing over my image. The thing is, I need to save it as a .png file with part of the water "dripping" off the edge of my photo onto a transparent background (background must be transparent). The problem I have is as soon as the image hits the transparent background, the black comes back.
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I don't understand how you're using "screen" blending mode on a single image, but is this the effect you're trying to get (I used a blue colour to show the transparent area at the bottom of the image):
I used the free KillWhite plug-in (http://mikes3d.com/extra/scripting-plugins/killwhite/) with your image:
Converted the image to RGB. (Image...Mode...RGB Color)
Duplicated the background layer (Ctrl+J).
Inverted the colours on that duplicated layer (Ctrl+I), so that the black background becomes white.
Used KillWhite to...well...kill the white on that layer.
Inverted the colours again.
Used Enhance...Lighting...Brightness/Contrast as well as Levels to darken the water splash.
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How do you make the background of an object transparent in Adobe Illustrator?

Hello Forum.
How do you make the background of an object transparent in Adobe Illustrator?
I have been having issues with using the Magic Wand tool in Adobe Illustrator as well as the lasso tool.
Basically, I am trying to put a small graphic into a new Illustrator file.
The first thing I tried to do is to use the magic wand tool. But I found out that this did not work on a jpeg image since it did not have any individual objects to select.
So I tried something new. I opened the file in Adobe Photoshop and used the lasso tool to select an area. Then I coped this area. Then I tried to paste it into Adobe Illustrator. But the background was not transparent for the pasted image.
How do I make the background transparent.
I made this small video to show what I am talking about:
http://youtu.be/2LgMGEF6z10

Don't Copy/Paste the image.
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Dittco wrote:
It IS possible: Select the image. Open effects (Window > Effects). Switch from "normal" to "multiply". Viola! White background is gone.
That only works with a white background. In addition, it introduces a transparency effect, with its associated problems.
With a rather light background: Select the image. Open clipping path (Object > Clipping Path > Options). Select Type > Detect Edges; use Threshold and Tolerance to get as close as possible to the edge of your image. This may be difficult because of a too low resolution image, or too much fringe on the edge -- if all fails, use the Inset Frame value to force the mask "into" the image. Click OK, and the background is gone.
But that's not the only way: you can always create a clipping path manually, and then you are in total control, not limited by transparency side effects, auto-edge detection, and busy backgrounds.

How do i make psd files transparent?

How do i make psd images transparent when I drag and drop the layer onto the stage on flash cs6?
For example the way iv been doing it up until now was saving as a psd then going to file import to library on flash. This is very very time consuming and would be much easyer if i can just drag and drop the photoshop layer onto the stage, but the problem is that the image gets a white box around it and isn't transparent when i do that.
Is there an option in photoshop or flash to fix this and make the background trasnparent?

Reminds me of Yoshi from Mario Bros
I know what you'd like to do but as the first reply mentioned, you can't do that. Until Photoshop is updated to copy with transparency intact to the Windows clipboard, you won't be able to do that. The reason I linked and showed a screenshot of the software GIMP is to prove that it's a Photoshop limitation, not a limitation of Flash or the Windows clipboard.
Knowing that fact, there is no way for you to copy/paste drag/drop from Photoshop directly into Flash.
Cartoon animating is essentially identical to how most games work. You create one large master image that contains all the possible variations of your subject (a face, a car, etc) and import that into a game. You do the same when animating, only you're keeping them all separate instead of one image.
Knowing your experience with Flash is small and growing, I'm not going to make the most optimal recommendation. I'll stick to 2 things I mentioned before but elaborate on them.
1) Save your assets to actual PNGs with transparency, then import into Flash.
The reason I'd recommend this the most is because of Flash's update function (which I will explain) and it can be automated a bit (also will be explained).
So I grabbed a Yoshi sprite sheet and say I made a new pose as you mentioned. In Photoshop I'd then select and copy this new pose alone, with transparency:
As you know, once you do that you can bring up a 'New Image' dialog and it will already have the size of your copied pixels (with trimmed transparency):
You can see the size is correct and the preset is clipboard. After that you just paste your new image in and turn off the background to gain transparency. Then you save it out as a separate file. I always use Save For Web for a pinch of file size optimization and overall control:
Again, I realize this is a lot more than you want to do, but all of this can be automated which will be explained after making it virtually a single button push operation.
Now we have the image as a separate new PNG image with transparency intact. This image should be imported into Flash's library:
Now you both have a physical separate copy of this pose in a PNG file (which can be useful for many reasons) and Flash can use that file with it's built in update command for very quick changes.
Now say you touch up a pose a bit. I'll make it really obvious and change the entire hue. You make your changes in Photoshop, follow the same process (even making size changes to the original image), eventually overwriting the PNG you created for that pose:
Now in Flash, all you need to do is use the Update function. Right-click on the image in your library, select Update. Because this is a file with a physical location, that is all that is needed to change the image in Flash:
The power in this is if you make sweeping changes to dozens or hundreds of PNGs, you can do this in one command in Flash. Select all the changed images and hit Update and all your changes will be done at once. You can't do things like this when you copy and paste directly into Flash.
That said, almost all of the steps above can be automated using Photoshops Actions panel. No need to reinvent the wheel, Actions are fully explained here:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-7448a.h tml
I would recommend recording the action after you make your marquee selection around what you want to save as a PNG. Record right up to Save For Web and stop there. Then in the future you press the hotkey you assign and it will extract your selection, open a new document, paste it in, disable the background for transparency and bring you to the dialog you can name the image in. That's pretty easy and automated. Then just import into Flash and enjoy the benefits.
2) Use Photoshop to create the assets, then a different program to copy/paste into Flash
Not ideal to need 2 programs, however if you really want to copy and paste directly into Flash, this is the way to go. Get any program that can read the PSD file format, open your PSD in it. If you have enough RAM this really shouldn't be an issue (PS and GIMP side by side, same file open):
As you make changes to the PSD, just hit reload or revert in your "copy with transparency" supporting program, copy what you need, paste into Flash:
I'll explain some of the advantages of the previous workflow if you'd like but I think this is enough information overload for now.

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I just wish that common features like layers, color, swatches, styles, masks, adjustments, character, paragraph and so on - looked and functioned the same across adobe applications. Is that too much to ask for?
In some cases, that would be absurd. Photoshop and Illustrator are fundamentally differerent environments, as they should be. Photoshop Layers and Illustrator/InDesign Layers are entirely different things, because a vector drawing program works with arranging OBJECTS (raster images, vector paths, text objects) in a Z stacking order and XY position. A Photoshop Layer is essentially just another raster image of the same pixel count as all the others, viewed optionally opaquely or transparently on your screen. It would be ridiculous if Photoshop created a whole new raster image every time you colored another selection of pixels. It would be ridiculous if Illustrator created a new Layer everytime you draw a new path.
Regarding text, Photoshop and Illustrator share the same lame text engine. Illustrator's should be like InDesign's, not like Photoshop's.
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It was not until AI10 that its print dialog acquired a simple Fit To Page command. You had to manually figure and enter a scale factor, and that was limited on the low end to 25%. Can that logically be "defended" on the basis that 'AI is not an imagesetter'? Every dang software on the planet provides a Fit To Page print option!
This "It's not a technical illustration program" argument is every bit as nonsensical. Every one of Illustrator's direct competitors provides for user-defined drawing scales, and has for decades. Illustrator is just as "technical" a drawing program as those others are. It's just particularly lame at it in this regard. And since when is "technical" illustration not "illustration"? And since when is user-defined drawing scale only needed for "technical" illustration? Absolutely ridiculous.
So what if in its infancy Illustrator was a tool for PostScript workflow? Illustrator's leading competitor for most of its history, FreeHand, was initially based on the path drawing engine of a font design software. But when it went to market as a general illustration tool, it blew the functional and interface doors off Illustrator, and continued to do so throughout its history.
The simple fact is this: Throughout its history, Illustrator never kept up with the basic drawing features, interface refinements, and performance of its direct competitors. Its market share is primarily due to its carrying an Adobe label--and to the absurd defensiveness of too many of its users who have next to no experience with anything else.
Ilustrator, Indesign and Photoshop share about 90% of the same functionality.
Where do you get that?
Photoshop's primary purpose is fine-tuning of raster imagery, especially photography. You don't do sophisticated color correction, channel operations, sharpening, etc., in Illustrator or InDesign. That's what I would call its "90% functionality."
InDesign's primary purose is automation of repetitive assembly tasks and text handling in high page-count documents. You don't do master pages, indexes, tables of contents, constant spooling the hard disk, hundreds of externally linked raster and vector files, chapters-long threaded text stories in Illustrator or Photoshop. That's what I would call its "90% functionality."
Illustrator's primary purpose is general-purpose vector drawing (which most certainly includes many kinds of 'technical' illustration) using cubic Bezier curves, and page-assembly for low page-count, illustration-intensive documents. That's what I would call its "90% functionality."
Now ask yourself: Should programs fundamentally structured for different primary purposes necessarily share the same interface? I say no, not necessarily. Example: The mere use of the same term (Layers) in Photoshop and Illustrator for what are fundamentally two different things has led to a gross misunderstanding on the part of Photoshop users who are Illustrator beginners, which is repeated here in this very forum almost every day.
Ask yourself this: Should unyielding adherance to the organizational dictates of Adobe's so-called "unified" interface be allowed to result in a palette flyout menu in InDesign that contains only one option? Is the very concept of a 'menu' not fundametally antithetical to a single choice? Is that not just poor interface design, regardless of whether it "matches" that of the other programs in the so-called "suite"? (Frankly, I find Adobe's over-use of flyout menus--which effectively HIDE important options--generally both ill-conceived and poorly executed.)
No, there simply is no excuse for Illusrator's still lacking user-defined drawing scales, just as there was no excuse for its lacking multiple pages for two full decades, just as there is no excuse for its still lacking reliable snaps, connector lines, live shape primitives (!), proper arc-drawing, proper corner rounding, inline graphics, auto-fitting textframes, the ability to join multiple paths at once, (note that NONE of those can be called specifically "technical" drawing features) and a plethora of other functions that are bare-bones basic to vector drawing. The programs is just archaic and outdated in all these regards, and that's all there is to it.
JET

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1966desertrat,
There are various ways to do this; here is one:
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Message was edited by: hatstead
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How would you make an effect like this?

Hi! I'm new to the forums, but hopefully it's ok if I start this new discussion. I'm very new to Photoshop as well (newbie).
Here is the image: http://sffbookreview.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/life-of-pi-banner.png
How would you make the image on the right - with the watercolor painting crop effect of the tiger? Also, how would you make the font on the left gradually turn to orange?
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Hi there,
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