Eddage Posted January 26, 2008 Posted January 26, 2008 Just a quick question I hope someone can help me with... When I save a file as a .png in Photoshop is there a way to keep the layers in tact? If I use Fireworks then the layers are all there after saving/loading, however if I load a .png in Photoshop then it's just a flat image? Is this just the way Photoshop handles the format or can I get it to keep the layer structure?
Emasher Posted January 26, 2008 Posted January 26, 2008 PNGs do not support layers. If you want to keep the layers use either a TIFF or a PSD.
Eddage Posted January 26, 2008 Author Posted January 26, 2008 PNGs do not support layers. If you want to keep the layers use either a TIFF or a PSD. Well then how come they do in Fireworks?!
Emasher Posted January 26, 2008 Posted January 26, 2008 From reading a bit of adobe's website I think fireworks saves layer data to its PNG files that cannot be read by other applications that support layers. Can you export from fireworks to PSD.
Eddage Posted January 26, 2008 Author Posted January 26, 2008 Nah, I'm actually using Photoshop to do the editing, it's just that I need to save it in a .png which means if I want to re-edit I then have to open the saved .psd file, edit that and save it as a .png again! Just thought there might be a way to get around the need for the seperate .psd, but if there isn't then it doesn't matter.
Jasper Posted January 26, 2008 Posted January 26, 2008 I do know it's probably better if you save it in a PSD, because even though there might be some layers in that PNG of yours, you're still losing a lot of data. And preferably TIFF.
Eddage Posted January 26, 2008 Author Posted January 26, 2008 Yes but I need to have a .png that's the whole point! Was just hoping I could save some time by simply being able to work with just the .png rather than the .psd as well.
Jasper Posted January 26, 2008 Posted January 26, 2008 I always keep duplicates. It's also a safe backup way. I really advice you to do both. PNG is usually not a container of a lot of information, but a filetype pushed towards end-user. Only make a PNG when you're finished with doing it, and save the rest to edit it later in a PSD file. But okay, it would be easier if browsers just supported PSD, or PNG supported everything a PSD does. But honestly, is layers the only thing you need to save? Because I don't see you saving effects, styles, typo and vectors like that in a PNG... EDIT Adobe Fireworks (formerly by Macromedia) uses PNG as its native file format, allowing other image editors and preview utilities to view the flattened image. However, Fireworks by default also stores meta data for layers, animation, vector data, text and effects. Such files should not be distributed directly. Wikipedia So apparantly it does...
Recommended Posts