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Transparency lost in PNG to Tiff Conversion

Posted: 2013-03-28T11:56:00-07:00
by jeffreyrempel
Hi,

I have spent hours trying to find a way to convert a transparent PNG to a Tiff that will be transparent in both Photoshop and Indesign. The only result I have gotten so far is a tiff were the transparent area is either solid white or black. Thanks in advanced for any help you can provide.

I am not seeing a way to attach images but I would be happy to provide my sample image.

Re: Transparency lost in PNG to Tiff Conversion

Posted: 2013-03-28T12:00:08-07:00
by fmw42
The issue may be that IM 6 cannot handle both background transparency and alpha transparency. It may only be able to handle one.

You can upload your image to any free image host such as dropbox. The post a link to it here.

Please identify your version of IM and platform. Perhaps an IM upgrade might help. But lets check your image first.

Re: Transparency lost in PNG to Tiff Conversion

Posted: 2013-03-28T12:19:26-07:00
by jeffreyrempel
Thanks for the quick response!

I have posted my image to https://www.dropbox.com/s/8hngwurcvoqvboe/PNG40.png

I am using ImageMagick 6.8.4-1. It should be the latest version I downloaded it today.

I am running on a windows 7 x64 machine.

Thanks, Again

Re: Transparency lost in PNG to Tiff Conversion

Posted: 2013-03-28T20:59:42-07:00
by fmw42
I converted your png to tif in IM 6.8.4.3 and it opens fine in my old Photoshop CS, where it has an alpha channel. It displays fine in my Safari browser. I do not have Indesign to test it. The alpha channel in PS seems rather odd to me though I am no expert. It shows as black on white as the channel. And in the display it shows as a black quadrilateral in the middle of the image. When one checks on the alpha channel, then the rectangle shows as red. So it seems to me that this was create in some rather odd manner.

If you double click on the alpha channel, it shows that the transparency is red with 50% opacity. Perhaps you should edit it and make it black with 0 opacity so that it is fully transparent.

But apparently IM discards this color and opacity information, since when I view the PNG in my browser it shows as perfectly transparent.

I do not know enough about the PNG properties to know where that color and opacity might be stored or if PS is just adding it for some reason.

Perhaps another user knows more about PNG and PS/TIFF than I do and can answer this question better.