Tutorial: Saving as a .png with Photoshop
by Meryl Bartho

Screenshots are Photoshop CS but applicable to any version.

In digital scrapbooking .png files are used a great deal as they retain transparency of the background.

Figure 1

Say, for example you had this fine, black cat which you wished to use as a sort of stamp on a layout – as it is it has a square of grey surrounding it.

Figure 2

Step 1 - Open your Black Cat.jpg in Photoshop, and duplicate this layer. Now switch off its “eye” in the layer palette.
Select your Magic Wand from the tools palette, and click it in the grey area, your selection will show as the “marching ants”, press delete, and the background will be removed, showing the grey grid, indicating transparency as in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3

Now that you have the background removed you will need to save it as a .png to preserve the transparency.

File > Save As, select .png from the menu on the new screen (at this stage be sure to save in a folder where you will know where to find it again!)
(see below)

You will then be asked to choose Interlaced – choose “None” (Choosing Interlaced gives larger file size, used in web work) (see below)
And you are done! You now have a lovely black cat to use in your next project and you know how to save as a useful .png.