[JetShave]

I've received some .jpg files from a friend depicting a t shirt design. All is well except that the design should be on a green background but it comes to me in black. It's a photoshop file and I have PS 5.5. I asked for it to be sent in Fireworks but the problem remains the same.

He's Mac I'm Mac and he's sent the files to third party (Mac) who gets it with the green background so it looks like it's my problem. I'm stumped. Does anyone have any ideas?

[::maroma::]

Well, it all depends on what your end use of the graphic is. But one idea is to use the Magic Wand tool and select the black background. Then either change its value or just fill it in with your chosen color.

Another idea is to use the Pen tool to make a clipping path around it. Then you can knock out the background.

Another idea is to use the Color Range tool from the Select menu. Then choose the black as your color to select and delete or fill.

...There are some other ways, but these are the simplest I can think of. Hope this helps!

[Aric]

He sent the exact same file to a third party and the background shows up green on their computer? Why doesn't your friend who did the design send you the photoshop file with the background color in a different layer from the design, that way you can change it to whatever color you like. That way it'll save you the time and trouble of seperating the design from the background and you just have to worry bout seperating the design.

[Corys]

is the green a dark green?
could it be a calibration thing? Many times for me a dark green will look black on screen.
you might want to double check with the densitometer.

[SunSeeker]

View the info palette (F8) and put the cursor over the background.
If the green value is higher than the red and blue values then the colour is green, your monitor is just unable to show it correctly, possibly due to monitor calibration.
If this is the case try running the adobe gamma app to balance your screen.
If that doesn't work, perhaps your colour prefs are messed up, have you changed them? I would usually recommend changing them to a colour space of adobe rgb or apple rgb if they will end up in print.

5.5 default is sRGB, I believe. (I am pretty sure the s stands for Sh|t) and posterises the onscreen appearence of certain colours.

If the rgb values are the same eg 0,0,0 or 5,5,5 you are getting black and this could be caused by jpeg compression. Use a non lossy format such as tiff or psd. (This would seem unlikely though,as someone else is able to view the colour correctly)