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Christopher22049701gl9q
Known Participant
January 3, 2022
Question

Saved PSE projects save with a white blank mask

  • January 3, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 2691 views

Hello everybody, I'm new to PSE and am fighting a vexing challenge.  Any project in which I use a layer mask saves with a white masked forground or background leaving the rest of the picture masked.  All images look fine in PSE thus the surprise when I see the saved result. What am I doing that prevents the file from saving 'properly'.  Example file attached

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2 replies

Jeff Arola
Community Expert
Jeff ArolaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 4, 2022

In the TIFF Options dialog did you check Save Transparency?

 

 

 

C
Christopher22049701gl9qAuthor
Known Participant
January 6, 2022

That option was not avaialbe to me.  I'm on a Mac if that helps

hatstead
hatstead
Inspiring
January 6, 2022

On your screen shot, it is in the lower left, at bottom.

hatstead
hatstead
Inspiring
January 3, 2022

It is not entirely clear to me what you are doing to produce this. I am assuming that this antique originally was in a picture with a complex background and that you are trying to isolate it. Correct me if this is not so,

So that we are all on the same page, please tell us the steps you have taken in your work-flow. Also, it would help if you post the original picture file for reference.

 

C
Christopher22049701gl9qAuthor
Known Participant
January 3, 2022

Hello hatstead!  Thanks for the fast replly.  Yes you are exactly right.  Its actually a Absinth vase and I've attached the origional file.  My workflow was as follows: (1) duplicate background layer and hide the origional, (2) select the vase, table and glasses with polygon lasso, (3) refined the edges using the refine edge tool, (4) output the refined edge product to a seperate layer with layer mask, (4) continued to refine the image on the layer mask makeing small selections and painting black until the image was fully isolated, (5) applied Gausian blur to the backround layer copy.  At this point I saved the file in as a tiff to my desktop and noted that the thumbnail showed my vase and table but the backgrond was pure white.  I saved another copy as a tiff with all layers flattened and this made no differene.  The file opened fine in Photoshop but the resulting tiff file was not something I could share with anyone.  As a further test I've tried this workflow on several images and the result was alwasy the same -  the foreground that was in the mask is visible and the background is 'replaced' by a pure white background.  Inserting another image layer made no difference.

hatstead
hatstead
Inspiring
January 3, 2022

ok.

After step #4, open a blank layer at the top of the stack of layers, and press CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+E to create a stamp visible layer, an amalgam of the layers below. Then shut off the visiblity of the layers below the stamp visible layer.

Your background is entirely white (solid color), so activate the Magic wand tool. On the tool's option bar, uncheck contiguous, and accept the default tolerance 32. Left click the white background, and press delete on the keyboard. 

You should be left with the vase surrounded by a checkerboard pattern, which denotes transparency.

You can open a blank layer below and fill it with color, or a gradient, or a texture, etc.

Why did you use Gaussian blur? 

If the tolerance 32 did not fetch the entire background, you may have to adjust this value. You can also use the Eraser tool to tidy up.

 

 

 

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