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unique_person4993
Known Participant
June 14, 2022
Open for Voting

Restore old PNG-8 Export Transparency Function as a New Option

  • June 14, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 502 views

As per the discussion that's been happening in this thread:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-bugs/p-export-as-8-bit-png-issue/idc-p/13002438/load-autosave/true/page/3#form_c36e47d7456db4

PNG-8 exporting in Photoshop used to produce a smaller file sized image with alpha transparency. With one of the past few Photoshop updates, this option was changed to no longer support alpha transparency, as appearently this was a bug and the files were not saving as intended. However the ability to export a smaller PNG file with semi-transparency is pretty much vital to web design these days, as webpages become more dynamic and responsive, so the change to this function is disruptive to other people's and my own workflow. In my world I don't specifically need an Indexed PNG, just a PNG with a smaller file size and semi-transparency. If I wanted an Index image with no alpha transparency, I would just export a GIF, making the corrected version of the PNG-8 option pretty redundant.

 

This option is still technically accessable by choosing 'Use Legacy "Export As"' in Preferences > Export, but all legacy options are eventually phased out and I believe this function should be restored as an export option somewhere. Here are my suggestions: 

 

  1. Just readd the old function somewhere in the export screens, exactly as it worked before, but don't label it as being 'PNG-8' or Indexed at all so the name is accurate. 
  2. Add the ability for Photoshop to save Indexed PNGs with alpha transparency. This is something the PNG format does support, but Photoshop itself does not, as said in the thread linked above.

 

The second option is definitely the more complicated one to add, so personally I just want the first option to be available, and not get phased out as a legacy option. I'm sure the second would be useful to some people so it should be considered, but in the mean time I think the old option at least should be changed from being a legacy setting to an additional setting in the current export window. 

 

 

 

    3 replies

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    unique_person4993Author
    Known Participant
    May 18, 2026

    So how do you bump up a request in this forum? Because I submitted this 3 whole years ago, yet I’m STILL stuck using the “legacy” version of Export As because of this change. 

     

    The normal Export As is also awful in the way of not letting you choose a real JPG quality either, though, so I guess I’m not missing out on much. 

    Stefan_HQ
    Stefan_HQ
    Participating Frequently
    May 18, 2026

    I upvoted this now.

    So I might ask you as you seem more updated on this.

    What I want to be able to do is export to is index colored with support for RGBA. I did not think it was possible at all and that one could just export to RGB + set one color to act ask mask (or lets call it 1 bit alpha - but its really a matte color)

    So in the legacy export checking alpha really do export the index colors as RGBA? Reason I ask is that tried before to export such and when I read that png back to PSD (even if it was supposed to be saved as 8 bit) photoshop opened it as RGB - it looked good though. So it was more I guess than that PS do not support display or index CLUT editing? (so their workaround it seems was to when loading a 8 png with alpha load it into RGB mode)

     

    If it supports exporting alpha into into index RGBA value

    • If so is there any way to control the amount of color index entries the alpha color are using?
    • this matte color one can select that it says Alpha blends to do it export it as premultiplied alpha or not?
    • When it detect alpha does all pixels blend to this Matte color = it discard the pixels RGB value for those that has alpha > reason I ask is that one might have painted stuff that has alpha and also contains different color
      • dream is to be able to say have half of an image opaque and the other 50% transparent - for this ideally then 128 color indexes would contain the RGB value plus Alpha 255 while the other 128 indexes had the same RGB values but Alpha was 128

    Especially for old consoles like PS1/Saturn/Dreamcast/PS2 this feature is really usefull.

    Many thanks for your reply

     
     

    S
    SecretSecret
    Participating Frequently
    July 6, 2022

    This was not a "bug". It was added in 2015!

    See for yourself:
    https://superuser.com/q/284931

     

      C
      chrisn50837302
      Inspiring
      June 14, 2022

      Being that I started the thread about the export as bug, I am totally on board with this. Regardless of the reasons why it should not work, or what causes it to work, it worked, and made useable files that were considerably smaller. Its not useful for only web pages, we use it in Mobile games were file size is crucial and the smaller I can make file sizes the more creative I can get with in game art. 

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