2 Replies Latest reply: Nov 16, 2010 12:18 PM by 3ABNPublishing RSS

    Photoshop CS5 transparency preview seems very inaccurate

    3ABNPublishing Community Member

      The Photoshop CS5 transparency preview (the checkerboard effect) seems very inaccurate. I'm not sure the problem is limited to CS5; I seem to recall having similar problems in previous versions. But I recently noticed this in a dramatic way in a project I am working on now.

       

      This is what the preview looked like at 200% size:

      Screen shot 2010-11-16 at 8.06.23 AM.png

      Notice the banding, the sudden transition from translucent to opaque, and the width of the transparent area. All of these are greatly exaggerated and inaccurate.

       

      This is what the SAME IMAGE looks like with a solid white background behind it:

      Screen shot 2010-11-16 at 8.06.39 AM.png

      As you can see, the gradient is much smoother when there is a solid behind it, and also the transparency checkerboard greatly exaggerated the extent (the width) of the blend. With the transparency checkerboard, you can read the whole word "Hello." But in actual fact, only the "H" and part of the "e" are visible on a solid background.

       

      This is what I would expect the transparency preview to look like, if it were accurate:

       

      Screen shot 2010-11-16 at 8.08.16 AM.png

      This last image is a simulation I made by pasting a solid checkerboard pattern behind the gradient. As you can see, it has the same fall-off as the image with the solid white background above.

       

      I guess I'm curious if there is some rationale why Photoshop's transparency works the way it does. It seems very unhelpful and misleading to me.

        • 1. Re: Photoshop CS5 transparency preview seems very inaccurate
          c.pfaffenbichler Community Member

          I can’t speak for Adobe naturally, but I think there may be a reasonable rationale.

           

          If one were to put a print on some transparent material on a white sheet of paper it would probably appear quite different from being held up against a random illuminated background – and the Transparency Grid might be an attempt to reflect that.

          • 2. Re: Photoshop CS5 transparency preview seems very inaccurate
            3ABNPublishing Community Member

            That's an interesting thought. However, I've printed on transparencies before, and I don't see that connection. I think that for most people using Photoshop, images with transparency are not being printed on transparencies (if you've ever done it, you know that for all practical intents white = transparent when printing on transparent media; the output is indeed different, even for completely opaque colors, than when printing on traditional paper media, but I cannot imagine that the Photoshop developers were aiming at that when coding it, and if they were they still did a bad job). Instead most transparency users, I reckon, are people like me who are either making partially transparent images for print layouts (objects to import into a page spread), or else doing web graphics with transparency. Both of these options ... which I will guess amount to something like 99% of the use of transparency in Photoshop ... would benefit from a more accurate preview ... because the end result that one gets when you put the object in a page spread or combine it with elements in a web page is like what you see with my white background version or my simulated mockup of how transparency "should" look, and not like what Photoshop shows you.