Transparent Background When Saving to Different File Formats

[kpotts90]

On 12/21/2023 at 8:20 AM, thomaso said:

As mentioned before, the PNG file type does not support CMYK – but Affinity documents do.

To export as CMYK and with transparency choose TIF or PDF.

How do you keep a transparent background when saving in these formats? My art board has a transparent background but my saved file ends up with a solid white one.

[Hangman]

Hi @kpotts90,

Raster file formats gif, png, tiff, tga, jxl, psd and webp all support transparent backgrounds and vector formats, eps, svg, pdf inherently do if you don't add a physical background to your artwork.

If you've not added a rectangle as a background layer and your artwork doesn't take up the entire background and can still see the checkerboard pattern in your Affinity file then exporting to any of the above file formats should automatically result in a transparent background.

To test this if you create a new Affinity file, give it a solid colour background and then place a file using any of the above file formats onto your new file you should see the solid colour background behind your placed file.

If you're not seeing this then perhaps you could upload a sample file so we can take a look...

[PaulEC]

Just a note about PDF files. Even if a PDF actually has a transparent background, by default it will display as having a white background in most PDF reader apps. (You should be able to change this in the settings of the PDF reader.)

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, Hangman said:

and can still see the checkerboard pattern in your Affinity file

For PDF (as a container file format) it is not required to set the Affinity document properties to show the transparency pattern for an export with transparent background (page/paper white) – whereas e.g. TIF needs the pattern to be activated before export even if its Matte colour is set to none in the export settings, indicated by the red line: 

To me (in V1) this need to have the transparency pattern activated before export appears to conflict with the matte setting in the default export presets and thus feels like a bug.

[Hangman]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

To me (in V1) this need to have the transparency pattern activated before export appears to conflict with the matte setting in the default export presets and thus feels like a bug.

This was confirmed to be by Design here though I think many would prefer setting the Matte to None to result in a transparent background rather than having to set it in the Document Setup panel...