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Photoshop not recognizing alpha channel from After Effects still frame export.
Just like it sounds. I have an image with a transparent BG in AE that I want to be able to open in Photoshop. I go to Composition>Save Frame As then choose a PSD with transparency. It exports fine. The alpha channel shows up when I do quicklook on the Mac. It shows up in Preview. I have transparency when I import it into Final Cut. I have transparency when I bring it back into After Effects. But when I try to open it up in Photoshop, it has a black background. I have also tried a TIFF with transparency, but that doesn’t work either.
Anyone know what’s happening here? Am I missing something important?
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7 Replies
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Check your Channels palette and see if the alpha channel is in there. If it is, just Command-click its thumbnail to make a selection of it and then you can make a layer matte out of that. That should get you your transparency back.
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Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately that only works halfway. I get the outline transparency back, but some of the semi-transparent colorized areas get knocked out. I might not be creating the mask correctly, but the real problem is that I can’t just open up this image that’s supposed to have transparency built into it.
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Have you tried Composition>Save Frame As>Photoshop Layers instead of Save Frame As>File…? I just gave that a try on a few projects and they popped open with transparency built in.
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I did try that, but it’s the same problem. Here’s some screen grabs of what it looks like in AE versus what it looks like in Photoshop when I try to export as layers:
Photoshop on top.
AE on the bottom.It’s not the biggest difference, but it’s enough to be annoying and unusable for certain applications.
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Even though this thread is 2 years old and you probably have already moved on from this project, I found out how to do this. I was having the same problem with having text in AE and not being able to export it out so the PS could see the alpha channel. Here’s what I did to fix it:
1) Have image or text how you want it
2) Add a new solid below everything
3) Composition > Save Frame As > Photoshop Layers
4) RenderI then opened the PSD file in PS and deleted the solid layer. Hope this helps in the future.
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Thanks Rob! I had totally forgotten about this. Thanks for coming up with the solution, though now that I’m running Adobe CC, I can’t seem to replicate the problem! 😛
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Thank you for sharing your solution Rob. Only Adobe would make a program that recognizes alpha channels, unless it comes from their own software… Nevertheless your trick is helpful. Thanks!!
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