Every new document has a white background, can't remove

[erkerkerk]

Hi all, 

Just getting started with Photo 2.1.1 today and loving it so far, except for one major issue / user error. Every new document I create has a white background despite there being no all-white layer underneath everything. See the attached screenshot. There's nothing there, but it's white! I can select the white background of a new document and click "delete" until the cows come home, but the white background remains. This flies in the face of everything I've learned from using other image editors in the past and I'm not sure what to do. Can someone help? Every new template I've tried seems to have this issue and I can't find where to specify the background of a new document!

[carl123]

1. The background defaults to white, if you want no background colour select....

Document > Transparent Background

 

2. If you want a specific colour for your background, just use a Rectangle Shape and cover the entire background with it, then colour the Rectangle

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, carl123 said:

2. If you want a specific colour for your background, just use a Rectangle Shape and cover the entire background with it, then colour the Rectangle

Or, since you are using AP, add a New Fill Layer from the Layer menu.

[erkerkerk]

Thanks for trying to help, but I'm still confused. What I want is to lose the background color of my document in Affinity Photo. It's white no matter what I do.

Going to Layer > New Fill Layer had no effect.

It seems wild to use a rectangle shape on every document just to make the background transparent. To quote every infomercial ever, there's got to be a better way.

Say I want to make a PNG with a transparent background from a new document. How do I do that?

[walt.farrell]

18 minutes ago, erkerkerk said:

What I want is to lose the background color of my document in Affinity Photo. It's white no matter what I do.

Document > Transparent Background should do it for you, as suggested above. You can also set that when creating a new document.

[markw]

When creating a New document, under the ‘Colour’ tab make sure the 'Transparent Background’ tick-box is selected.
In any existing documents that have the white background, in the Menubar go to: Document > Transparent Background and select it there.

[R C-R]

49 minutes ago, erkerkerk said:

What I want is to lose the background color of my document in Affinity Photo. It's white no matter what I do.

The white background you see is not a part of the document itself, so you can't lose it. It is just there to show the size & position of the document wherever it is displayed on the screen.

57 minutes ago, erkerkerk said:

Going to Layer > New Fill Layer had no effect.

You can set the color of a Fill Layer to any color you want (including gradients), so it will have an effect. However, if the document does not have a transparent background, & you set the Fill layer's color to white, it will appear that nothing has changed; although since it is a document layer, even if you export to PNG with a transparent background, the background will be filled with white because that layer covers the entire document.

1 hour ago, erkerkerk said:

Say I want to make a PNG with a transparent background from a new document. How do I do that?

Already explained several times, including in the first reply.

[erkerkerk]

1 hour ago, markw said:

When creating a New document, under the ‘Colour’ tab make sure the 'Transparent Background’ tick-box is selected.
In any existing documents that have the white background, in the Menubar go to: Document > Transparent Background and select it there.

Thank you! This solved it for me. I appreciate it.

[PattiR]

I'm having the same problem & its driving me nuts! Tried checking and unchecking the transparentcy box, no change. Played with contrast and britness on my monitor no change! How the heck do I get a transparent backbround. It shows transparent in the little layers box, but on ALL the documents it stays white no matter what I do. Makes it REALLY hard to see what you are doing!

[Brian_J]

4 minutes ago, PattiR said:

I'm having the same problem & its driving me nuts! Tried checking and unchecking the transparentcy box, no change. Played with contrast and britness on my monitor no change! How the heck do I get a transparent backbround. It shows transparent in the little layers box, but on ALL the documents it stays white no matter what I do. Makes it REALLY hard to see what you are doing!

Can you provide a file that is displaying the behavior you described?

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, PattiR said:

I'm having the same problem & its driving me nuts! Tried checking and unchecking the transparentcy box, no change. Played with contrast and britness on my monitor no change! How the heck do I get a transparent backbround. It shows transparent in the little layers box, but on ALL the documents it stays white no matter what I do. Makes it REALLY hard to see what you are doing!

Can you create a screenshot and share it with us? 

For a guess: the monitor brightness it contrast might be set to extreme values that prevent you from seeing the checkerboard. In that case, if you create a screenshot on your system, and we can see the checkerboard but you can't, that would confirm my guess.

[PattiR]

I have fiddled with both brightness and contrast on my monitor, no matter the setting, all I see is white. The checkerboard briefly & lightly shows up when I try to catch a snip of it, but then goes right back to white. 

[PattiR]

Heres a screen shot

[PattiR]

Here's another showing something I exported. Still white, although if you look at the layers panel you can see I removed the bacground & it exports ok, but working like this is a royal pain.

[Aammppaa]

To me the background in both your posted screenshots is clearly a checkerboard. So it looks like an issue with your screen (or possibly eyes?!).

[Old Bruce]

34 minutes ago, PattiR said:

Heres a screen shot

I have to agree with Aammppaa that there is clearly a checkerboard pattern, not a White Background.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, PattiR said:

I have fiddled with both brightness and contrast on my monitor, no matter the setting, all I see is white. The checkerboard briefly & lightly shows up when I try to catch a snip of it, but then goes right back to white. 

Check whether you have some kind of automatic brightness setting in the monitor or in your OS, or possibly some additional application that is "helping" you. As others have said, you clearly have the checkerboard.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Aammppaa said:

To me the background in both your posted screenshots is clearly a checkerboard. So it looks like an issue with your screen (or possibly eyes?!).

Same for me. The checkerboard pattern is clearly visible in both your screenshots.

[PaulEC]

Ditto!

[Pšenda]

6 hours ago, PattiR said:

I'm having the same problem

Try setting correct ICC profile for monitor in OS, or ICC profile in document.

 

Edited January 12 by Pšenda

[PattiR]

OK, I finally figured it out. Once I looked at it on my tablet. It was the settings in my Nvidia card. So, just to be safe, I re-calibrated both monitors. 
Thanks for pushing me to keep checking. New settings are also easier on my eyes. 😃

[Old Bruce]

Thanks for reporting your solution. Other people in the future will see it and benefit from this.