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photoshop automatically flattening my transparent images

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
October 5, 2021
9 replies
4090 views

when I drag a transparent png into photoshop it is automatically flattening the transparent portion to a solid white. how in the world do I undo this horrible horrible thing and keep my transparency.

Note: I can drag and drop my image again and have the transparency.

macOS

Correct answer Brad @ Roaring Mouse

I did a deeper dive into this and have found the OP's file is using an indexed-color transparency attribute set for any white pixel to be transparent. According to the official specification for PNG, this is all well and good (it uses a flag at the head of the file: "tRNS"). What it requires, however, is a preceding flag "PLTE" which defines the color mode. Without it, it seems Photoshop is (properly?) strictly ignoring the "tRNS' flag altogether and opening the file as RGB without Transparency. This file is indeed missing the PLTE attribute.

If you open the file in Preview or any other program and resave out, it will work fine.

All this to say: it's not you, it's the file. Have them resave a different way.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Correct answer

Community Expert

I did a deeper dive into this and have found the OP's file is using an indexed-color transparency attribute set for any white pixel to be transparent. According to the official specification for PNG, this is all well and good (it uses a flag at the head of the file: "tRNS"). What it requires, however, is a preceding flag "PLTE" which defines the color mode. Without it, it seems Photoshop is (properly?) strictly ignoring the "tRNS' flag altogether and opening the file as RGB without Transparency. This file is indeed missing the PLTE attribute.

If you open the file in Preview or any other program and resave out, it will work fine.

All this to say: it's not you, it's the file. Have them resave a different way.

J

jamesveinbergs1@gmail.comAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you very much for diving into this further. ill be sure and post back on here if I ever find out on how it was originally saved out.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

I looked at it in another program (in my case, Graphic Converter) and it opens fine, but the File Info on it does not show an Alpha Channel as existing at all but it is spec'd for Transparency on all pure white pixels. My guess is PS is taking the info that it's just RGB instead of ARGB to heart. However if I simply resave the file from a GC, it's corrected and opens fine.

before/After:

As another test, I tried a plugin called SuperPNG and it opens correctly.

Weird

J

jamesveinbergs1@gmail.comAuthor

Participating Frequently

I would assume thats why PS doesnt like it. Would an image compressor used outside of PS possibly be the culprit? I tested a few but wasnt able to recreate the issue

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

Using firefox 93.0 if i use the blue download button in the preview window, that version has no transparency, however right clicking the image in the preview window and doing Save Imge As results in an image with transparency. Also the images are two different sizes.

The results above apply to both dragging to photoshop from windows file explorer and using File>Open from within photoshop.

right click and Save Image As results in transparency

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

Just got the same result as jamesveinberg on Windows 11 and Photoshop 22.5.1 when dragging from the Windows File Explorer Downloads folder to Photoshop to create a new document. That is there is no transparency.

CShubert

Community Manager

Hi, the original post was on Mac OS, so now we have both Mac and Windows with this issue? Both of us that tested were on Mac, so just making sure we are looking at the same thing but on different platforms...

Thanks.

CShubert

Community Manager

Hi,

Did a file open as well as drag on top of the file and all show transparancy.

Hate to ask the obvious, but have you restarted your computer? Sorry, just trying to get to square one to see what might be happening.

J

jamesveinbergs1@gmail.comAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks for checking.
Ha all good, restarted and still having the same issue. Photoshop 22.5.1 on MacOS Big Sur 11.5.2

CShubert

Community Manager

Hi,

If you can share the file you are having issues with, we can try and see if we all get the same issue. As @Earth Oliver mentioned, have you tried File/Open in the workflow and does the same issue with the same file happen?

Thank you,

J

jamesveinbergs1@gmail.comAuthor

Participating Frequently

27929e57-d201-44f0-8873-137373152445.png

Leslie Moak Murray

Community Expert

I saved it to my computer, went to Photoshop (CS6), opened it. It has the transparency:

Earth Oliver

Legend

why didn't you just use File>Open?

J

jamesveinbergs1@gmail.comAuthor

Participating Frequently

dang, forgot one haha. same issue

CShubert

Community Manager

Hi,

When you drag a transparent PNG file into a Photoshop document window it should place a smart object that will allow you to accept via the checkmark or cancel.

If this is not happening for you, please share your workflow and screenshots showing your process so others can try to see what else is happening.

Thank you,

J

jamesveinbergs1@gmail.comAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thanks Cory, I posted above in the thread with my testing/workflow etc.

J E L

Community Expert

@jamesveinbergs1@gmail.com Can I ask what you are dragging and dropping the transparent PNG into? A layer in a JPG or PSD file? Into an empty PSD file? Does the same thing happen if you File > Place Embedded or Place Linked?

J

jamesveinbergs1@gmail.comAuthor

Participating Frequently

I did some more testing after my panic post and found that it was only this one particular file that a third party had prepped for an email. I tried 5 different methods of pulling the file into photoshop (shown in the screenshot). The only way I could get the transparency to show is to pull in the file with any method into photoshop (which would flatten it), and then pull in the image again by copy/pasting it from Finder.

My guess would be that it has to do with how the third party saved it out to begin with?

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