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Getting rid of partially transparent pixels?


Nanako

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Hi everyone. I know this is an age-old problem, however the common solutions to it don't apply in my situation.

I have an image (of many layers) which are mostly solid colour, and solid alpha. 1-bit alpha, which is exactly what i want. However there are a few parts which are slightly blurry, where it fades between the two. this is causing problems in my end result. The common white halo effect.

I've tried the flaming pear solidify plugin, and it's totally not what i want. I don't want to fill everything with colour or mess around with alpha channels. What i want to do is convert all partially transparent pixels, to either 0 or 100% alpha, with no middle ground. Essentially to make the image alpha binary. ideally some plugin which lets me define the threshold for one or the other would be nice.

I'm saving as an 8bit png, which naturally forces everything to be 1-bit alpha. this is unfortunately resulting in a lot of pixels being white where they show as almost invisible in photoshop, so i want to fix this problem authorside. Ideally i'd like to not mess around with alpha channels - i like the png format because i never have to touch the alpha channel, it's all done for me which speeds up workflow dramatically. I know i can save as a 24 bit png which will store the partial alpha information, but this also increases filesize which is not an acceptable compromise for my purpose.

i find it confusing that this doesn't exist in photoshop to begin with, but is there such a plugin that could do the job for me?
 
You can play and apply with Curves or Levels on mask.
Something like that:
levels.jpg

Except it will not be Color Fill but <layer name> mask.
 
Can you elaborate a bit? i'm not certain what you mean.
I'm working with a 14-layer image atm. my end result is to export layers as files and reassemble them elsewhere. and i'm planning to do this a lot more, so idelly anything that minimised interaction with each layer would be best.

I think what would be idea for me would be some filter to do what saving as PNG-8 does, splitting the image into binary alpha. if i could do that from within photoshop, then i could just select and delete any unnecessary solid parts and be happy.
 
The simplest is to use FilterFactory to build plugin like this with one slider:
R: r
G: g
B: b
a: a>ctl(0) ? 255:0
, where ctl(0) would be your threshold slider.
 
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I don't understand what this filter factory is. google is only turning up results of filters made using it but no info on how to get it myself. Can you explain a bit more?

i can't believe photoshop has no way to select pixels by their transparency? i must be doing something wrong
 
Can you elaborate a bit? i'm not certain what you mean.
I'm working with a 14-layer image atm. my end result is to export layers as files and reassemble them elsewhere. and i'm planning to do this a lot more, so idelly anything that minimised interaction with each layer would be best.

I think what would be idea for me would be some filter to do what saving as PNG-8 does, splitting the image into binary alpha. if i could do that from within photoshop, then i could just select and delete any unnecessary solid parts and be happy.

Now i don't understand you.
Anyway, my idea is...you got alpha chanell which isn't "solid". Alpha chanell is greyscale image. 0% black is 100% transparent, 100% black is 0% transparent. Everything between is more or less transparent. So idea is bring those bits who isn't 0% or 100% black to one or other side. You can choose method you want. You can copy/paste it in new layer and convert to Bitmap it and copy/paste back.
You can use Threshold to it. Which actually gives very good result and probably is better that my previous advice.
So think of Alpha/mask as greyscale image and be creative. You can do to it everything you can do to a normal greyscale image.
 
I don't understand what this filter factory is. google is only turning up results of filters made using it but no info on how to get it myself. Can you explain a bit more?

i can't believe photoshop has no way to select pixels by their transparency? i must be doing something wrong

I don't know about selecting pixels by their transparency. Probably because there is no such thing as transparency but greyscale mask (or something) :)
Read my previous post. You can select greyscale pixels by their value. If there isn't any psysical alpha/mask you can create it yourself and then work with it.
That the way i see it (probably there is more)
 
Filter Factory is free and comes with PS on the CD.

i can't believe photoshop has no way to select pixels by their transparency?

Of course it has. Ctrl-click layer to load it's transparency as a selection.
Press Q to switch to Quick Mask mode. Go to Image->Adjustments->Threshhold and set your threshhold for transparency. Press Q again to leave Quick Mask mode. Ctrl-Shift-I to invert the selection. Hit Delete to turn highly transparent pixel to totaly transparent.
Press Ctrl-D to deselect. Now press Ctr-J, Ctrl-E several times to make sligthly transparent pixel totaly opaque.
That's all....

Or just use Filter Factory:cheesygrin::cheesygrin:
 

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