#Graphicconverter opacity layer how to
#Graphicconverter opacity layer pdf
#Graphicconverter opacity layer windows

You *can* us the snapshot tool to draw a square around the image (or select the entire page for that matter), then paste into another application and crop/edit.

The result is a bitmap file with a black background. Using Acrobat 8, when I select the image with Select Tool, I can drag it to the desktop. I've since decided that it works a lot better if you never copy the images at all-I select them and then drag them to my desktop, and, in my setup, at least, that creates a TIFF file with a fully manipulable alpha channel which opens correctly in any alpha-channel aware app.

#Graphicconverter opacity layer pdf

(I don't recall what particular setup that was it might have been with Preview under OS X 10.4 or 10.5.) Now, there may indeed be something in the PDF that makes different readers behave that way-possibly a result of some image manipulation that's happened in the page layout process-but not every app on every OS will behave that way. While I was trying to work out just what was going on a while back, I ran into a setup where I was getting black backgrounds on some images and white backgrounds on others *from the same PDF*. I think it might be something in the reader, actually. That would lead me to believe that *something* in the image or PDF is telling the tool to interpret the alpha channel differently. That doesn't explain why an image extracted from one of Paizo's PDFs has a black background, while an image extracted from another vendor's PDFs, using the same tools and processes, will have a white background. I'm willing to go through the pain (I've done so for years), but if there were some combination of tools that could save me many 15-30 minute chunks of time, I could use that time much better reading sourcebooks and writing material (especially since I do a lot of this on my lunch hour). I know the extraction tool mentioned above fails to do it correctly.

#Graphicconverter opacity layer windows

If so, then I'm guessing that some combination of Adobe for Windows and the the Windows clipboard is causing it to fail for me. Vic, if you open Bestiary 1, select the shoggoth picture, and paste it, does it come out correct for you? I can fiddle with the threshold values for 'how close' to select pixels, but that just creates white spots in the dark areas. I think the problem is that while Acrobat and others can render using the alpha channel, they flatten it somehow when doing a copy/paste, because even in Gimp, I can't keep the alpha channel, and there's no single pixel color I can select that selects the 'correct' pixels.

A perfect example is the shoggoth from Bestiary 1 (not that I've used one recently or anything). It has a function called 'Flatten Alpha Channel,' which sets the background to whatever color you have currently selected as the background color in your toolbox and then permanently renders the image against that color. Second, you could try to paste the image into a different application-ideally one that understands alpha channels and transparency, or at least one that defaults to white instead of black.įor specific advice, I can only tell you what I use: Graphic Converter for OS X. That probably means some kind of image editing software.

#Graphicconverter opacity layer how to

When you go from software or file formats that use alpha channels and transparency to software or file formats that don't, something along the way will decide how to convert it (depending on your configuration, it's probably either the OS itself or the application you're pasting into).įirst, you could try to find some software that lets you control how that transition is handled. The part you're seeing as black is what's called an 'alpha channel,' which is used (among other things) for transparency. PS: By the way, I'm using Acrobat Reader 8 on a Windows7 machine. I think there's something floating around in the alpha channel of Paizo's PDF images. For example, I've pulled images from WotC's 'Dawn of Defiance' Star Wars campaign adventures with no problems. The reason is that other other PDFs I extract images from (using the same tools) come out with white backgrounds. I'm pretty sure this is something Paizo is doing (probably unintentionally). I also do the same thing with it: bucket fill the black to white and zap the pixels that don't cooperate. When i pull the image out of the PDF, it has a black background in place of the transparency. Looks like I'm stuck with the 'manual fix' method, though the 'threshold fill' in the Gimp makes it a little less painful.

I just do it enough to make it look ok.Ĭlearly they do something funky with the images in the PDF, since they're transparent in the PDF. That is caused because they don't make the background transparent I think, normal I have to zoom in myself and white out the junk Pixel by Pixel with what is left over after the fill.

Are you talking about the black field in the background that does not always all go away when you do a fill?