Creative Communities of the World Forums

The peer to peer support community for media production professionals.

Activity › Forums › Adobe After Effects › Saving Alpha Matte with BG visible

  • Saving Alpha Matte with BG visible

    Posted by Amarjeet Singh on January 10, 2009 at 11:14 pm

    when you save a frame by solo’ing the layer and saving as a psd or a 32b tga, you get alpha.
    however this file is a complete waste since when imported it has a black fringe at the edges.

    what i would like to do is how its done in photoshop, wherein you can save the image with the bg by creating and defining an alpha channel, or simply saving as an unflattened psd. so when imported into afx it would not have any fringes.

    question: how do i save a frame with the bg and other elements visible and alpha intact.
    i get a feeling its something silly that i am missing out on.

    Amarjeet Singh replied 17 years, 8 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • David Bogie

    January 10, 2009 at 11:42 pm

    [amarjeet singh] “when you save a frame by solo’ing the layer and saving as a psd or a 32b tga, you get alpha.
    however this file is a complete waste since when imported it has a black fringe at the edges.”

    Hmm, I’ve been doing that for ages, never had a black fringe issue. But I don’t export as psd, I usually use png or tif to carry alphas. If you pick up fringe pixels of black, you should be able to use a premutliplied setting. Suggest you try interpreting your alpha at different settings. Trish and Chris Meyer explain how to handle alpha fringes in all of their books. I’m not where I can get to my library of AE books.

    [amarjeet singh] “question: how do i save a frame with the bg and other elements visible and alpha intact.
    i get a feeling its something silly that i am missing out on.”

    You can’t. AE produces a still image with only one layer. You just save an alpha or matte pass, the alpha information only. This is often done when handing off or importing shadow catchers to or from other applications.
    Umm, I don’t have CS4 installed yet but I don’t think multi-layer stills are possible out AECS4 or we’d have heard about it by now.

    Stay tuned for acouple more days, someone may have entirely different advice for you.

    bogiesan

  • Amarjeet Singh

    January 14, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    bump

We use anonymous cookies to give you the best experience we can.
Our Privacy policy | GDPR Policy