Saving without background

[Barry S]

I used to be able to export drawings without a background, to overlay onto other pictures. This no longer works - they have a white background of the size I made the selection. Has anyone else had this problem? Have I accidentally turned this faciity off?

[R C-R]

Which Affinity app & which export format are you using?

[MEB]

Hi @Barry S,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
After selecting the objects have you changed the Area dropdown in the export dialog to Selection without background?

[Barry S]

In Designer, I have always used the "Export" facility in the designer mode, and used Area> without background. this has always produced a drawing which I can overlay onto pictures or other drawings with the background shoing through. This no longer works - I get a white background.

[walt.farrell]

What format are you exporting to?

And have you set up your document to have a transparent background?

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Barry S said:

This no longer works - I get a white background.

As Walt asked, what export format are exporting to? If it is jpeg then that format does not support transparency so you will always get a background color.

[MEB]

Hi @Barry S,
In the export dialog, click the More button and check if the Matte colour well is set to white. If so click on it and set it to No fill (the white circle with a red diagonal). I'm assuming you are exporting to a format that do support transparency (like PNG, TIFF) since you said you already did it previously.

To clear this up - if you are exporting the file (File > Export, Area set to whole Document) without any object selected make sure:
- you document background is set up as transparent
- you are exporting to a file that supports transparency
- the Matte accessible through the More button in the Export dialog is set to No Fill.

If you have a couple objects selected when you export the file (Area set to Selection without background in the Export dialog) then the document's transparency is irrelevant.