My knowledge of photoshop isn't bad. Though I'm not an expert (yet?). This particular issue has me a bit stumped. I'm familiar with alpha channels, but not sure how to get a partially transparent object from a solid background.

I want to get a picture with it's transparency preserved. but I can't get it directly. The best I can do is take a screenshot of it on a colored background. Cutting it out would be pretty easy, but that alone wouldn't preserve it's transparency.

The particular image is this:

[IMG]http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m143/WarKirby/nametag.png[/IMG]

it's a nametag, partially transparent. Shown with a white background, but I can get a different color if it would make things easier. I need a way to filter out the white background, and get the nametag on a transparent background. Any advice?

With the high contrast and (almost) solid edge, would a couple of clicks of the 'Magic Eraser' give you what you're after?

unless I'm misunderstanding how the magic eraser works, no.

Perhaps this pic explains better

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m143/WarKirby/nametag-2.png

The text is opaque. The panel behind it is ~50% transparent

You could put the 'panel' on a seperate layer and play with the layer transparency.

I'd love to, but I can't. I can only take a flattened screenshot of it.

I'm confused! (as usual) How did you get the black square between the text and the panel?

I'm taking screenshots from Second Life. I just placed panels behind the nametag to take a screenshot

Unless I'm being particularly dense, why don't you just duplicate it? It's only a grey box with rounded corners, with orange text with drop shadow applied. Five minutes to run up.

Or am I missing something?

I could duplicate it, yes. I'm really concerned about learning something, that could be applied to similar problems in the future. I can remake this, but I might not be able to remake some other image .SO I'm hoping there's a technique to extract it, assuming a single color background

Given that it's a flattened image with no alpha mask whatsoever, there's no "transparency" to select.

If it were layered, and one of the layers semi-transparent, then there you go, but it's flat.

I was thinking the same thing as spedler - I'd just recreate it given how simple it is, and make the grey box semi-transparent so you can see what's underneath.

I know you were looking for something better as far as instructions or help, sorry. Good luck-
-Lew ;-)

ok not sure i understand you correctly but here goes,

( i did  this with you second image, but will also work with your first)

take you image into photoshop, then duplicate layer in the layer panel (you need to do this to be able to activate the layer style options), hide the underlying layer (make non- visible) and select the duplicate layer,

then click "layer" (drop down-menu) then select "layer style", then "blending options...",
now you have your layer style popup window, at the bottom you'll see two sliders, one says "this layer" it has a black end slider and a white end slider, if you click and drag on the white end slider from right to left (doesn't have to move very much at all),

you will now have no white visible, and be left with a transparent background replacing that which was white, save that as a .png, problem solved, you now have a transparent image again.

(puts super-hero cape back on, and assumes his heroic pose, again Vince has saved the day, starts to mumble something about he doesn't do it for the fame but for his fellow... blah, blah)

the above is for PS7 by the way.