I’m trying to create some new pages for my business web site. I took photos on a relatively high key background, but I still had to adjust them to remove background shadows and so on.
One image is a shoebox overflowing with photos and strips of negatives. The shoebox is white. I’ve carefully masked out the background using an alpha mask (I’m using Pixelmator), saved as a TIFF, and imported to a graphic box in Freeway. The page background colour shows through the transparent areas, but no matter what I do I get a thin grey line around the imported image (see the screen grab in the link).
As an aside, I thought I’d add the background colour to the TIFF for this image to overcome the grey line. Pixelmator’s idea of R 230 G 230 B230 is a couple of shades lighter than Freeway’s idea. I’ve raised this question on the Pixelmator forums.
Is this grey line expected behaviour from Freeway? How can I overcome it if it is? There is definitely no grey line on the original image, as exporting with a solid white background shows.
I really don’t want to resort to Photoshop if I can help it. Any ideas folks?
Hi Heather, do you have the option to save as a transparent png in Pixelmator? Maybe not for final use, but it would give you an idea if your masking was spot on.
Just a suggestion as I’ve never seen this happen, there again, I normally use jpegs, psd’s and pngs, very rarely tiffs.
Trev
On 17 Sep 2012, at 09:18, Heather Kavanagh wrote:
Dear all,
This is doing my head in.
I’m trying to create some new pages for my business web site. I took photos on a relatively high key background, but I still had to adjust them to remove background shadows and so on.
One image is a shoebox overflowing with photos and strips of negatives. The shoebox is white. I’ve carefully masked out the background using an alpha mask (I’m using Pixelmator), saved as a TIFF, and imported to a graphic box in Freeway. The page background colour shows through the transparent areas, but no matter what I do I get a thin grey line around the imported image (see the screen grab in the link).
As an aside, I thought I’d add the background colour to the TIFF for this image to overcome the grey line. Pixelmator’s idea of R 230 G 230 B230 is a couple of shades lighter than Freeway’s idea. I’ve raised this question on the Pixelmator forums.
Is this grey line expected behaviour from Freeway? How can I overcome it if it is? There is definitely no grey line on the original image, as exporting with a solid white background shows.
I really don’t want to resort to Photoshop if I can help it. Any ideas folks?
Hi Heather, do you have the option to save as a transparent png in Pixelmator? Maybe not for final use, but it would give you an idea if your masking was spot on.
It’s a good point. I’m pretty sure my mask is spot on, as there’s no visible line in Pixelmator at any zoom level. I always place a coloured layer below a mask so I can see bits I’ve missed, which I then turn off for export. I’ve resorted to Photoshop to get this one out of the way, and will test again in Pixelmator later.
Freeway has always supported TIFF. Until it supported PSD, TIFF was the only way to get this effect. Pixelmator doesn’t support PSD export with transparency, so I use TIFF over JPEG or PNG for issues of quality.
I think the background colour shift in Pixelmator is a bug. I’m waiting to see what response I get on the forum before I post it as a bug.
This response is not directly relevant Heather, but I had a problem exporting in PSD from Pixelmator. In Freeway I got a thin red line! I got rid of the problem by exporting as a jpeg. Maybe Pixelmator has several bugs regarding its export ability.
I had a gray line issue - but as Delta dave pointed out - it was my layout not the image. I have never had issues w the png or jpeg out of pixelmator.
Julie
On Sep 17, 2012, at 5:09 AM, Heather Kavanagh email@hidden wrote:
On 17 Sep 2012, at 10:05, Trevor Reaveley wrote:
Hi Heather, do you have the option to save as a transparent png in Pixelmator? Maybe not for final use, but it would give you an idea if your masking was spot on.
It’s a good point. I’m pretty sure my mask is spot on, as there’s no visible line in Pixelmator at any zoom level. I always place a coloured layer below a mask so I can see bits I’ve missed, which I then turn off for export. I’ve resorted to Photoshop to get this one out of the way, and will test again in Pixelmator later.
Freeway has always supported TIFF. Until it supported PSD, TIFF was the only way to get this effect. Pixelmator doesn’t support PSD export with transparency, so I use TIFF over JPEG or PNG for issues of quality.
I think the background colour shift in Pixelmator is a bug. I’m waiting to see what response I get on the forum before I post it as a bug.
I had a gray line issue - but as Delta dave pointed out - it was my layout not the image. I have never had issues w the png or jpeg out of pixelmator.
Hi Julie
The thing is I didn’t want umpteen variants of the image littering my hard drive. It appears a couple of times in different circumstances. I much prefer Freeway’s handling of one image format for everything in this respect.
In the end, I went into Photoshop, did the alpha transparency trick, and it all worked fluidly. There’s something odd about the way Pixelmator handles the alpha transparency, I think. What’s frustrating is I tend to use alpha to knock out backgrounds a lot, so if it’s a bug and until it gets fixed, I will have to keep Photoshop around to perform this routine.
I really wish I could dump PS for PXM full time, but it just doesn’t quite make it sometimes.
The image in question is the shoebox of photos in the carousel on my Imagic Design web site, and also on the information page you get when you click the image. Two different background colours would have meant two different JPGs or PNGs, two different images to update if I made a change and so on.
Cheers
Heather
Imagic Design * Good Design - No Compromise
email@hidden http://www.imagic-design.co.uk
Twitter @Imagic-Design
T: 01634 864017
I have not used the alpha - I mostly do PNG and change the settings in the box for millions.
I have used PSD as a backup for the pen - but now with the newish pen I dont need to.
BTW there is an update today for the healing tool.
J
On Sep 19, 2012, at 10:45 AM, Heather Kavanagh email@hidden wrote:
On 19 Sep 2012, at 15:39, Julie Maxwell wrote:
I had a gray line issue - but as Delta dave pointed out - it was my layout not the image. I have never had issues w the png or jpeg out of pixelmator.
Hi Julie
The thing is I didn’t want umpteen variants of the image littering my hard drive. It appears a couple of times in different circumstances. I much prefer Freeway’s handling of one image format for everything in this respect.
In the end, I went into Photoshop, did the alpha transparency trick, and it all worked fluidly. There’s something odd about the way Pixelmator handles the alpha transparency, I think. What’s frustrating is I tend to use alpha to knock out backgrounds a lot, so if it’s a bug and until it gets fixed, I will have to keep Photoshop around to perform this routine.
I really wish I could dump PS for PXM full time, but it just doesn’t quite make it sometimes.
The image in question is the shoebox of photos in the carousel on my Imagic Design web site, and also on the information page you get when you click the image. Two different background colours would have meant two different JPGs or PNGs, two different images to update if I made a change and so on.
Cheers
Heather
Imagic Design * Good Design - No Compromise
email@hidden http://www.imagic-design.co.uk
Twitter @Imagic-Design
T: 01634 864017
