Help! PNG Backrounds? (Yes I'm a noob)

[Starshine]

Hello again fellow Ren'py gamers and creators and players.
I'm having a really big problem, i cannot seem to make the backround of my characters transparent, without damaging the character itself. I'm using Photoshop CS5, but everytime i use the Magic Eraser on my PNG image, it removes half of the characters body, does anyone know what im doing wrong, or any solutions? basically i'm stuck of removing the white backrounds, i can remove it, but it ruins the images. I have seen many people's Ren'py characters, and they just seem to be perfect, without any missing lines. If there is no solution i guess it will just have to stay in its current state. (Yeah my Ren'py is Cartoon related.)

[Tetiel]

I think this might be more of a photoshop question than a renpy question. Would you mind giving me a screenshot of your current PSD (or your artist's PSD if you didn't create these) layers? I suspect you may have a white layer in the background that you have not turned off to make the actual image transparent.

[AxemRed]

Set the background color to transparent when creating the image (or delete the background layer).

[Starshine]

I think this might be more of a photoshop question than a renpy question. Would you mind giving me a screenshot of your current PSD (or your artist's PSD if you didn't create these) layers? I suspect you may have a white layer in the background that you have not turned off to make the actual image transparent.

Thank you for your reply, here is a screenshot, basically i drew my characters in Sai paint tool, and saved them as PNG files. originally my characters looked nothing like this, but someone i know dissed my original cartoon art style, so i tried to change it to look more cartoony-anime, like. Do you think saving the characters in PNG caused this problem? if so do you think i can revert it? i have all the files in PNG, do you think they can be re-saved into PSD, without anything going wrong?

I think you have solved my problem, for some reason the PNG files seem to be locked, where as the PSD files have no lock on them, i cannot seem to get rid of the lock on the layers on the PNG files, mabey photoshop doesn't work well with PNG files, mabey it only works with PSD files. do you think thats the problem, if so i'll have a go at messing around with photoshop.

[Starshine]

Set the background color to transparent when creating the image (or delete the background layer).

I cant i drew the pictures in another program, which doesn't have the transparent button. Although you can make the image itself transparent in Sai paint tool. The reason i use Sai to draw was becuse my tablet doesn't work with photoshop, and photoshop is very laggy, when i use my tablet. Sai is very smooth and doesn't lag on any on my computers. Mabey the main reason was becuse i had used Sai paint tool, many people use the program for drawing, and i have seen them enabled to make the backround transparent, but for some reason it doesnt work well with me.

[Tetiel]

It's entirely possible that you didn't preserve transparency through saving as a png in sai. I believe Sai has an option to save as a PSD file and you may want to do that in the future. I always save my files in two formats, PSD and jpg/png/whatever.

A quick fix solution may be to set the layer to multiply in photoshop and make a layer under that to fill in whatever white you need. Multiply basically makes everything darker (if there's non-white under it) and whites non-existant. Png files DO work in photoshop just fine in my experience so I'm honestly not exactly sure what happened, but it can be fixed.

[Starshine]

It's entirely possible that you didn't preserve transparency through saving as a png in sai. I believe Sai has an option to save as a PSD file and you may want to do that in the future. I always save my files in two formats, PSD and jpg/png/whatever.

A quick fix solution may be to set the layer to multiply in photoshop and make a layer under that to fill in whatever white you need. Multiply basically makes everything darker (if there's non-white under it) and whites non-existant. Png files DO work in photoshop just fine in my experience so I'm honestly not exactly sure what happened, but it can be fixed.

Thank you for your information Tetiel! i think your right, i proberly didnt use paint tool Sai properly. I'll mess with the Multiply mode in photoshop, and see if i can fix the problem, thank you for your answer, its very much appreciated, Btw your artwork looks great.

[Tetiel]

Thank you for your information Tetiel! i think your right, i proberly didnt use paint tool Sai properly. I'll mess with the Multiply mode in photoshop, and see if i can fix the problem, thank you for your answer, its very much appreciated, Btw your artwork looks great.

Why thank you, and I'm glad to help <3 Do let me know if you can't get it. I may be able to figure a few things out. I'm useless in Sai, but I use photoshop pretty well xD

[Starshine]

Thank you for your information Tetiel! i think your right, i proberly didnt use paint tool Sai properly. I'll mess with the Multiply mode in photoshop, and see if i can fix the problem, thank you for your answer, its very much appreciated, Btw your artwork looks great.

Why thank you, and I'm glad to help <3 Do let me know if you can't get it. I may be able to figure a few things out. I'm useless in Sai, but I use photoshop pretty well xD

Alright i will, thank you Tetiel!