[sra]

I've got a full copy of Photoshop CS2, which I'm ashamed to admit I never really learned how to use much. One thing I do fairly often, though, is to open an image in it and then export it with the background made transparent, for pasting onto a Keynote slide.

In the CS2[*] version (and earlier) there was a menu item, strangely located under "Help", that automated this entire process, once you selected the background. In the CS3 version, that menu item is no longer there (or if it is, I haven't found it). And since I never learned what Photoshop was really doing to achieve this, that means I'm now unable to make nice transparent-background images to use in my slides.

Can someone explain to me (bearing in mind that I'm NOT a real PhotoShop user, so I need baby steps for baby feet) how to do this?

Thanks very much in advance,

--
Steve Anderson
[*] Actually, I could never get the CS2 version of this to work correctly, so I have been using a pre-CS version for this purpose, but that's another story.

[tie]

Copy everything into a new layer, then select the background and hit delete. (If you hit delete without copying things into a new layer, it makes the background white instead of transparent.) This works on PS7, anyway.

[kmkkid]

Delete or hide (click the eye) the background layer in the layers palette...

[Apfhex]

If you're just opening a flat image like a JPEG, such that the one and only layer is the background layer, you can just double click on that layer (it asks you to give it a name) and it will become a regular layer with transparency behind it.

Unless you're deleting or masking parts of the image so that there's obvious transparency, I fail to see the point in this though...

[tie]

Thanks, Apfhex. There are some things I get so used to doing even though I know there has to be a better way..

[sra]

Thanks for the suggestions, but I still can't get it to work.
(a) If I open my (flat pdf) image in PS-CS3, and click on the single layer in the layers palette, it brings up a dialog box about that layer, but won't let me enter anything as a new name, or anything else, or dismiss the dialog (by either cancel or OK). In fact, at that point my only option is to force-quit.
(b) If I do the same thing in PS-CS2, I can click on the layer, and duplicate it. I then select the background (by color range - its a simple black-on-white image) and hit delete, as suggested. It looks like the right thing has happened: the white background is now replaced by a checkerboard pattern. But then no matter what I do before saving it (either nothing at all, or reordering the layers, or deleting the unmodified layer altogether, or clicking on the eye in the unmodified layers entry in the layers palette so it should become invisible), I still get the white background when I paste the image onto a Keynote slide.

I apologize for my cluelessness here. But this used to work so straightforwardly in PS7...

--
Steve Anderson

[Photo678]

you have to save as a png....a jpeg wont preserve the transperency

[sra]

OK, going through these steps and saving as a PNG file works. So I can do what I need to do. Thanks.

But the process (automated with the "Help" menu item) used to work to save as a PDF in PS7 (it was a PDF file, not JPEG that I started from and wanted to end up with). What's the difference?

Also, this only works for me in PS CS2. When I try to do any layer manipulation in PS CS3, I get a dialog box asking for a new layer name that cannot be completed or dismissed, which essentially hangs PhotoShop. Has anyone else seen this problem? (I'm running 10.4.8 on a 1.33 MHz 17" G4 PB with 1.5 Gb RAM)