Inspiring

Answered

Turn OFF Transparency in PNG?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
January 21, 2018
4 replies
19755 views

PS CS4

I have a PNG image (which also contains transparency). It is an image of an object over a background. (Having the transparency is a nice option should I want to use it, but I don't).

In this case, I want to load the PNG and see the object and it's background... NOT the transparency.

I can open the PNG in other apps and choose to see the transparency or not... but in PS I can not find how to turn this transparency OFF.

How do I turn OFF the transparency and see the image in full (object over background).

Thanks!

Mike

turn off transparency in png

Correct answer mtruly

Jeff,

Thank you very much for the link to the SuperPNG plugin. I have installed this in PS CS4 and it seems to work great for letting me disregard the transparency/alpha channel in a PNG when I don't need that info.

(PS CS4 does not have this capability natively. But later versions of PS can be made to disregard the transparency info of a PNG).

Thanks again.

Mike

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

SuperPNG is still available from here:

https://www.fnord.com/

Sebastian Bleak

Community Expert

Hi Mtruly,

I would add a new layer below your current image and fill the layer with a color. That will remove the transparency grid and allow you to see your image clearly. You can "Save As" to give it a new name and you'll have both available.

Hope you find this helpful!

-Sebastian

M

mtrulyAuthorCorrect answer

Inspiring

Jeff,

Thank you very much for the link to the SuperPNG plugin. I have installed this in PS CS4 and it seems to work great for letting me disregard the transparency/alpha channel in a PNG when I don't need that info.

(PS CS4 does not have this capability natively. But later versions of PS can be made to disregard the transparency info of a PNG).

Thanks again.

Mike

J

jelmar_3954

Participant

Hi Jeff,

is there an alternative for this now in 2025? Having the same problem now since superPNG is no longer available.

Bojan Živković11378569

Community Expert

A bit confusing request because you are mentioning actual background. Actual background is transparent what is represented with checkerboard. If you want to change checkerboard (transparency) settings then go to Preferences > Transparency & Gamut. I can not recall but if you can choose None from Grid Size drop-down then you will get solid color background, if that's what you want. You can also try to set Grid Colors to the same color to get solid color instead of the checkerboard.

M

mtrulyAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for the ideas.

I'm sorry, the screengrab image above may not be conveying all I want to convey.

I don't want to make the image have a white background. Behind the checkerboard shown in the screengrab... there already IS a background image.

You just can't see it because PS defaults to using the transparency in the PNG rather than giving the user the OPTION to turn OFF (disregard) the transparency and see the existing (desired) background.

Here's a screengrab from an app that handles this situation better and allows you to see the full RGB image (including background) by disabling the use of the alpha channel (which causes the background pixels NOT to be knocked out and replace with a checkerboard):

Oh, and that background is NOT black... there is a gradient to it.

Sadly, it seems at this point, that PS CS4 can NOT give the user the option to use or not use the transparency in a PNG which contains transparency.

Thanks again.

Mike

D Fosse

Community Expert

mtruly wrote
Sadly, it seems at this point, that PS CS4 can NOT give the user the option to use or not use the transparency in a PNG which contains transparency.

I just explained to you that Photoshop has this function in the newer versions. It does exactly what you ask for.

But you have chosen to stay with a version of Photoshop that was released in 2008 - that's ten years ago! If you expect feature updates to keep being distributed to all the old versions, it doesn't work that way. Old versions are left behind, and that's how all software companies operate.