I'm having a heck of a time trying to get an image 'tiff' to save with a transparent background. The original image was sent to me as a .pdf, I opened the .pdf and saved as a tiff. I then using the pen tool traced around the object, selected inverse and deleted the background. Everything thus far worked to plan, except when I import the 'tiff' image into 'InDesign' it has a white background. I then reloaded the image and saved in 'PNG-8", same results.
There’s no transparency support in tiffs (well sort of - multi layer tiff… but let’s ignore that for now).
If you just need it to import into indesign, just save it as a PSD file — but beware, you can make very large PSDs that can slow down indesign, you may want to save a separate flattened (except the transparency) version if you get into complex photoshop documents.
PNG also offers transparency and can be useful for other things, primarily RGB applications (like transparent things in Powerpoint, Keynote or on the web).
Thanks..I thought I was losing it ;-)) I saved the image in every imaginable format and nothing I did worked. As soon as I took the image from PS and imported to InDesign I lost the transparent background. I've been here for over an hour and finally figured it out. The import dialogue box in InDesign has some options for importing images such as this, made a few selections and I'm back in business. I really should have posted this in the InDesign forum ;-))
Some other applications may not support TIFF transparency correctly, but the file format does support it, and Photoshop's TIFF code supports transparency.
Chris, he’s clearly very new to this,"I then using the pen tool traced around the object, selected inverse and deleted the background.” I thought it better not to confuse the issue.
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