Exporting Images in PNG Format by BethLiz of Lizard Dau Designs

© 2008 Lizard Dau Designs. For personal use only.

This tutorial is was written by BethLiz of Lizard Dau Designs. Please do not copy, upload to any website, or claim my tutorial, or any of the graphics used as your own. Images created by you, as a result of using my tutorials, are your own to do with as you wish. If you have any questions about this tutorial or would like to obtain permission to share this tutorial, please contact me at bethlizard@msn.com for written permission. Thank you

As with most graphics programmes, when you create a layout or an element in PSP, you end up with a multi-layered document which you can then save as a PSP Image file. This is great because if you want to change something later, then it is easy to do so. But what about if you want to share an element to a friend or or make it available to others as part of a kit?

Well, not everyone uses PSP so you cannot share your files as PSP image files because other programmes cannot open them. That is where PSP comes to the rescue by providing a conversion facility whereby you can export your layout or elements as JPG, Tiff or PNG.

For anyone who is not familiar with exporting images to PNG format, you cannot just “Save your file as” because when you do this, PSP automatically merges all the layers and you end up with a PNG file with a white background like this one.

In order to export it with a transparent background so that it can be placed easily over other layers you need to ensure that your settings are as follows:

First, go to “File” on your top toolbar and then down to “Export” and “PNG Optimiser”.

You will be presented with a multi-tabbed dialogue box.

On the “Colours Tab”, select 16.7 Million Colours (24 Bit)

Then click on the “Transparency Tab” and select the following settings:

Select both

Alpha Channel Transparency
and
Existing Image or Layer Transparency

These two settings are the important ones. They control whether your background remains transparent or whether it is filled with a colour.

You can ignore the other tabs as they are set to the default settings and click OK to start the export process. You will then be taken to the “Save Copy As” screen where you can choose the location to save your PNG file to and also choose a unique name for your file.

By using these settings this is the sort of result you will achieve time and time again.

Now that wasn’t so difficult, was it?