Posted by Howard Cihak on October 30, 2012 at 5:02 AM
I'm using PS-CS5, and I'm trying to copy or cut a color image and paste it to a larger white background for printing. When I paste the color image (no matter whether it was cut or copied), it pastes as a B&W image.
Anyone know what's wrong and how to fix it?
Posted by Buck Ward on October 30, 2012 at 7:52 AM
I don't know why this is happening, but there may be other ways to skin the cat. Are you trying to paste a rectangular image on to a larger background to create a white border? You can do this by changing the canvas size, or by a simple drag and drop of one image to another of a larger size.
Posted by David Bostedo on October 30, 2012 at 9:17 AM
Howard --
With what you're trying... what mode is the white background image? It it in RGB mode, or Grayscale? What is the blend mode set to for the color image when you paste it in? Is it Normal? Other than that, I can't think of why it would lose color.
But I agree with Buck... there might be better ways to do this :
-- Can't you just print it smaller on the paper and let the paper provide the white border?
-- As Buck mentioned, you could grow the canvas size (Image -> Canvas Size) to add white around the image
It sounds to me as if the copy function is copying only one channel. Why, I don't know. But do check the blending modes, color mode and bit depth of both the image to be copied and that of the new canvas are the same.
I have portfolio pages (prints) that go into a book. I created a template that has some text, into which I paste the processed image. Here's what I do...
1. Open the template (new canvas).
2. Open the image I want to paste (this image is already sized, has embedded RGB profile, and sharpened)
3. Flatten the image to be pasted
4. Hit Ctrl-A to select the entire image (marching ants)
5. Hit Ctrl-C to copy the image
6. Activate the new document/ canvas
7. Hit Ctrl-V to paste the image.
The pasted image should be centered in the new canvas and a new layer will appear above the background layer in your new canvas. If you need to move the image, select the new layer and then you can use the Move tool to move it around.
I also agree with Buck and David. If you can keep it as simple as they suggest--go for it. If you do need something on the order of what I described, the procedure works every time with no loss of color, or other weird stuff.
You could try my method to see how it works. If the pasted image still shows in grey scale, it would indicate that the image file is corrupted in some way.
--P
Posted by Jim Bullard on October 30, 2012 at 12:24 PM
I assume you are trying to create a white border since you are pasting to a larger white background. A better way to do that is to use the Image>Canvas Size menu from your original image. You can choose white as your canvas color, check the "Relative" box and indicate how wide you want the white area to be in pixels, inches, centimeters or whatever. If you want one or more sides to have a different width you can do it by starting with the smallest increase then do a second round on only the height or the width (whichever you want wider than the rest) with the extra width. If only one side is to be wider click the arrow in in the Anchor box that is opposite the side you want wider so that all the increase is on one side and not evenly split.
If this is for a file to send out to a printer you may want to add yet another increase in overall size (Anchor centered) of 2 or 4 pixels that are a middle grey. This will give the printer a visible trim line that will result in the border you want.
Discussion
4 repliesAnyone know what's wrong and how to fix it?
With what you're trying... what mode is the white background image? It it in RGB mode, or Grayscale? What is the blend mode set to for the color image when you paste it in? Is it Normal? Other than that, I can't think of why it would lose color.
But I agree with Buck... there might be better ways to do this :
-- Can't you just print it smaller on the paper and let the paper provide the white border?
-- As Buck mentioned, you could grow the canvas size (Image -> Canvas Size) to add white around the image
It sounds to me as if the copy function is copying only one channel. Why, I don't know. But do check the blending modes, color mode and bit depth of both the image to be copied and that of the new canvas are the same.
I have portfolio pages (prints) that go into a book. I created a template that has some text, into which I paste the processed image. Here's what I do...
1. Open the template (new canvas).
2. Open the image I want to paste (this image is already sized, has embedded RGB profile, and sharpened)
3. Flatten the image to be pasted
4. Hit Ctrl-A to select the entire image (marching ants)
5. Hit Ctrl-C to copy the image
6. Activate the new document/ canvas
7. Hit Ctrl-V to paste the image.
The pasted image should be centered in the new canvas and a new layer will appear above the background layer in your new canvas. If you need to move the image, select the new layer and then you can use the Move tool to move it around.
I also agree with Buck and David. If you can keep it as simple as they suggest--go for it. If you do need something on the order of what I described, the procedure works every time with no loss of color, or other weird stuff.
You could try my method to see how it works. If the pasted image still shows in grey scale, it would indicate that the image file is corrupted in some way.
--P
If this is for a file to send out to a printer you may want to add yet another increase in overall size (Anchor centered) of 2 or 4 pixels that are a middle grey. This will give the printer a visible trim line that will result in the border you want.