Inspiring

Answered

Export without crop/trim?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
May 26, 2018
6 replies
40318 views

Hi,

If I create a new image with a transparent layer of say 300x300 pixels and put a white square from half to bottom (x: 0, y: 150, width: 300, height: 150) like this:

When I export this by right clicking the layer and choose "Export As... " it automatically crops the transparency and will give it a height of 150:

If I then change the height to 300 the rectangle gets centered :S (really?... Why?... Seems silly!)

Why would I want this behavior? It seems absolutely unwanted and frustrating because I have exactly what i want in the editor but when I export things change. Why would you do this,?, If I want something cropped or centered I will do it myself in the editor, there is no need for making this decision for me!!!

The File->Export->Layers To Files dialog has a Trim Layers checkbox to deal with this. But I want to be able to export a lot of groups (not layers) at the same time, this dialog cannot handle that because it can solely export layers and has no regards for groups (this will export all layers in a group, and not just the resulting frame). I fail to see the logic for putting the Trim optional in the layers dialog - which can't export groups correctly - and not having this option in the normal export - which will export the groups nicely, but as said has no trim options. :S

Is there anyway I can turn of the crop/trim of the export? Or is there a way to avoid it from centering? Basically I just want it to be exported as is! For my real work I need the transparent pixels above the square and not centered.!

Thanks a lot for any help on this!

Correct answer AliasMe

If been using flash/animate since Macromedia Flash 4. And i still see problems with masking in the editor the same way as I saw them back then. So they are not fixed or they are regressions. But in my country we have a saying: "niet geschoten is altijd mis", translate: "if you don't shoot, you will always miss".! And perhaps if we as a community give some more pressure on these topics, then perhaps good things will happen.

So i'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Somebody on the feedback.photoshop.com has provided a great solution:

You can put a mask on the root item you wish to export to prevent the Trim from happening: This can be a layer:

Or a group:

Then right the layer or group and choose "Export As...".

joej6690064

Participant

Masking doesnt work for me. Its infuritating how theres like 19 ways to now export stuff from photoshop, when it used to all be so much simpler. Photoshop has never been intuitive, but they just keep making it worse.

K

kauheaaStudent

Participant

I have the same issue in PS 2022... Though I don't want to save as PNG, but SVG. I'm using legacy export as to get the SVG export option there.

I'm making a font and I have all the letters, numbers and special characters on separate vector layers, positioned carefully on a specific sized canvas with enough transparent space around the letters, so they fit the font creation program's template. Without the trimming I could export all 75+ layers at once, by selecting them and right-click -> exporting, but now I need to export them all separately, which takes insane amount of time.

This has been an issue earlier as well in multiple projects and I can't believe it's still not fixed. It could be handy in other settings surely, but in many cases makes work unnecessarily slow. It could be a checkbox feature.

IanMcIntosh

Participant

I was having a similar issue (https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/export-as-automatically-trims-transparent-pixels/m-p/12049067/thread-id/543233#M544541). Based on replies there, I did come up with a solution: Ad a full-sized layer mask to a layer being exported. A mask with all pixels 255,255,255 (fully visible). This "tricks" the interface into thinking those are relevant pixels to export.

Adding barely-visible pixels is not a viable option. Optically invisible pixels are not mathematically invisible, if a computer needs to interpret the exported PNG.

J

Jackie Snyder

Participant

The masking option had been working perfectly for me until the 22.5.1 release. Even with a blank, full page layer mask, the Export As window now trims layers and groups. Anyone found a new fix for this?

M

Mr.Clopez

Participant

YES! This is happening to me as well with the 22.5.1 release. Previously applying the same mask to different layers and then selecting all layers and then "Quick Export as PNG" was a quick way to create PNGs that were all the same size (used for sprites and other CSS animations). Now this version only recognizes the image area of the layer.

O

oraunio

Participant

Have you tried Layer Comps? Create a comp for each of your layers or combination of, name them as you want the files named, then "File>Export>Layer Comps to Files...", and delete the Prefix and uncheck the Index. This should produce untrimmed images.

M

mark@headTrix

Community Expert

Just do a File>Export>Save for Web - then export it as a GIF or a PNG to keep the transparency and the image with white on bottom and transparency on the top.

Hope that helps!
mark

headTrix, Inc. | Adobe Certified Training & Consulting

P

Pressure

Participant

I am having a similar issue. Yes I can do the export / expoprt as dialogue.

But I want to create a timelapse from hand-held camera photographs. I am using Photoshop to align the photos.

Saving / exp[orting each one is time consuming.

If I use File: Generate: Image assets - on the transparency areas are all cropped.

Is there a way to export all layers without Photoshop cropping all transparent areas?

D

done87270249

Participating Frequently

EDIT: Testing in Adobe Photoshop Version: 21.1.2 20200410.r.136 2020/04/10: efaf3fa4e40 x64 today, when I am exporting from PSD to PNG, it is now keeping my artboard sizes instead of trimming by default. There still isn't a way to turn it on and off, but perhaps they have changed the default behavior to remove the trimming?

This test image was exported using export for screens, and keeps the padding:

Other way suggested:

Try file>export>layers to files, and de-select "trim:"

Everything will come out at the actual artboard size. Then, if you need to perform other operations in batch afterwards, you could use a watermarking action or similar to add in the 1% corner pixels to maintain the full size even when using other PS export modes that DON'T have this needed checkbox.

JJMack

Community Expert

Try using Save As. Or add a 1% opacity pixel in the top left and bottom right canvas corners so transparent borders will not be trimmed. Force Canvas size

JJMack

A

AliasMeAuthor

Inspiring

JJMack Thanks for your reply! Save-as will work for this example or a project that needs to be just one frame. But, as mentioned for my real work I have groups that I want to export (each group as its own image), which can not be done with the save-as dialog. It does seem to have a checkbox for layers though.

The 1% opacity pixels - although hackish - will probably work but will introduce artifacts. In my work I resize the canvas to 302 (with my own tools), center the content and then copy the border to the new pixels. This wil end up with having the 1% pixels scaled by 2.(having 4 1% in each corner). This is trick used for 2D OpenGL rendering to hide texture bleeding. I can still try it out but am assuming that the artifacts will be visible in my project. Also my project needs 100% alpha for the code to assume its empty, any value on the alpha channel will generate collisions (because it assumes somethings there). Also putting two of these pixels in every group in every document seems like a choir!

JJMack

Community Expert

JJMack wrote
You have to come up with some solution. If you can not handle an Alpha 254/255 that may possible be in the top left, bottom right or both then you need to come up with a way to add back in the empty border to layers.

Well, as mentioned my workaround is to duplicate all groups I wish to export, then merge all duplicated groups so it results in only one layer per group. Then hide all other layers/groups. Then use File->Export->Layers to Files with "Trim Layers" unchecked and "Visible Layers Only" checked.

JJMack wrote
You could request that feature on Adobe's feedback site Photoshop Family Customer Community However, IMO I do not think Adobe would add an option that so few would need to use.

In this case it should not be about the amount of people requesting it. In the core Photoshop is a graphics editor, and if i make something in it I want it the way I've made it. For me this qualifies a bug or issue and not as a feature because the end product is not what i have designed. And this on a flagship product does disappoint me. I have been a software developer all my life and an issue like this usually gets resolved quick because these kind of products have the unwritten rule: What You See Is What You Get... And we are not getting what we see!

Perhaps I will make a request for that, thanks for the tip!

AliasMe wrote
In this case it should not be about the amount of people requesting it. In the core Photoshop is a graphics editor, and if i make something in it I want it the way I've made it. For me this qualifies a bug or issue and not as a feature because the end product is not what i have designed. And this on a flagship product does disappoint me. I have been a software developer all my life and an issue like this usually gets resolved quick because these kind of products have the unwritten rule: What You See Is What You Get... And we are not getting what we see!
Perhaps I will make a request for that, thanks for the tip!

This is not a perfect world and Photoshop has its share of bugs. Historically some of the reported bugs acknowledged as bugs by Adobe have not been fixed the remain in Photoshop release after release. IMO as long as a version of Photoshop is stable and does not crash bugs that effect a small percentage of Photoshop users seem to be acceptable by Adobe mmanagement. Bugs that are in CS2 are still in CC 2018. Bugs introduced in other versions of Photoshop are still in CC 2018. IMO bug should be fixed Adobe does not seem to have the same opinion some bugs seem to be acceptable to Adobe management. I'm sure that Adobe's programmers could fix them.

JJMack

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