Saving a Path as a BMP

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I used a single Path to trace a photo, and when I am finished I try to save the Path as a bitmap (Path1.bmp), but, the bmp that gets created is all white – no lines at all. I see that Photoshop CS offers the option to Export the path to Illustrator, but, all I really want is to have this complex path saved as a *.bmp file (suitable for viewing with mspaint). How do I do that?

Stroke the path with a paintbrush (it’s in the Paths flyout menu) and save the result as a .bmp.

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Tacit,
When I right-click on my path, I get a roll-out dialogue and I select "stroke path" (the last one), which then gives me a dialogue box entitled "Stroke Path", and I can select from several items – I select Brush, and click OK. There is also a checkbox for "Simulate Pressure", which I leave unchecked.

Is there something else I have to do, because, the next thing I do is Save As, and choose bmp, but the resulting bmp is all white. I also notice that if I choose Export to Illustrator, the *.ai file is also ALL WHITE when I load it into Illustrator.

Obviously I need to do something else not immediately apparant. I can see my line-art, made by several sections of curved lines drawn with the pen, they all look nice and very visible, but, somehow, Photoshop doesn’t include them when I try to save. What could I be doing wrong? littleberry

Tacit,

I still can’t get it to work. Here is what I did: I click on Path, and then I right-click on Path1 (the path where I have my lines), and it gives me a small dialog box and I select "Stroke Path", and it gives me a new dialogue box where I can select from a list of tools (default is pencil) and I choose "brush". There is an option for Simulate Pressure which I leave unchecked. I click OK and then proceed to SAVE AS path01.bmp. When I look at this bmp with MSPAINT, it is all white. Is there something I need to do after clicking OK on the Stroke Path DIalogue box? Do I need to make some kind of selection? There must be some additional step that I am not getting here. Thanks for your posts. littlberry

wrote:

Tacit,
When I right-click on my path, I get a roll-out dialogue and I select "stroke path" (the last one), which then gives me a dialogue box entitled "Stroke Path", and I can select from several items – I select Brush, and click OK. There is also a checkbox for "Simulate Pressure", which I leave unchecked.

Is there something else I have to do, because, the next thing I do is Save As, and choose bmp, but the resulting bmp is all white. I also notice that if I choose Export to Illustrator, the *.ai file is also ALL WHITE when I load it into Illustrator.

Obviously I need to do something else not immediately apparant. I can see my line-art, made by several sections of curved lines drawn with the pen, they all look nice and very visible, but, somehow, Photoshop doesn’t include them when I try to save. What could I be doing wrong? littleberry

When you choose Brush, what is your foreground color? Is it white? Does an actual stroke appear?

Why are you saving as BMP? there are better formats unless you need BMP for some reason.

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On 2006-03-14 21:04:12 +0100, said:

I used a single Path to trace a photo, and when I am finished I try to save the Path as a bitmap (Path1.bmp), but, the bmp that gets created is all white – no lines at all. I see that Photoshop CS offers the option to Export the path to Illustrator, but, all I really want is to have this complex path saved as a *.bmp file (suitable for viewing with mspaint). How do I do that?
thanks, littleberry

Hi there littleberry,

Not exactly sure what you want to accomplish with this, but here we go 🙂

When you’ve created a path you should do something with it. You can save the path internally within Photoshop via the Paths tab (Select via the Window menu) but that’s only for Photoshop use.
When you want to ‘export’ your path you should create something with that path.

Make sure you have a PSD open instead of any flattened formats (like JPG or GIF), open your subject there, create your path and go to the Path tab.
Right click on the created path there, and you’ll have some options you can choose.
Specifically the ‘Stroke Path’ option should be very interesting for you. There you can actually create pixels in every way possible with your created path.
And that you can export to any format you want, like BMP.

Hope that’s what you want !

With kind regards,

PS User

On 2006-03-15 01:16:52 +0100, said:

Tacit,

I still can’t get it to work. Here is what I did: I click on Path, and then I right-click on Path1 (the path where I have my lines), and it gives me a small dialog box and I select "Stroke Path", and it gives me a new dialogue box where I can select from a list of tools (default is pencil) and I choose "brush". There is an option for Simulate Pressure which I leave unchecked. I click OK and then proceed to SAVE AS path01.bmp. When I look at this bmp with MSPAINT, it is all white. Is there something I need to do after clicking OK on the Stroke Path DIalogue box? Do I need to make some kind of selection? There must be some additional step that I am not getting here. Thanks for your posts. littlberry

Ah, hold on. Discard my previous post pls. Now I know what you mean and what you want done..
Sorry I didn’t read on first before replying.

This is pretty logical actually 🙂
When you save to a format as ‘simple’ as BMP, the image you’ve created with the stroked path isn’t transparant or anything. I think you’ve stroked the path with a default brush which is white. Saving a PSD document to BMP is automatically ‘flattened’ meaning the layers are merged together and the usually present transparant background is rendered full white, like a filled layer with the white color.

Please select a brush you want, or just the color you want your path in, prior to Stroking your Path. This should create your path with,
e.g. a black stroke. Then save that as BMP and that should make a
‘viola’ sounds coming from your voice output apparatus 🙂

With kind regards,

PS User

I am very confused now. I do NOT have any photos in the PSD format. All of my photos are either JPG or BMP. What I do is start Photoshop and right away OPEN one of my photos (the one I am testing with happens to be a JPG). It comes up squished, so I have to use the image>pixel aspect ratio>square to fix that (I wonder why Photoshop doesnt assume square by default?). Next I create a new layer, and reduce the opacity of layer 0 (which contains my JPG) to 50 %. Then I select Paths (3rd tab from the left) and then I select the PEN tool, and start tracing over my photo. I use the ctrl-up-click-ctrl-down method to end one curved path (set of points) and start another one. These paths (curved lines) appear as solid black lines about 2 pixels thick (one thing I would like to do is have an option to make these path lines thicker – don’t know how to do that).

While I am tracing, I can pause, pick Layers again, and toggle the photo visibilty icon so that the photo disappears and I can see how my tracing looks all by itsefl (this feature is vital – I couldn’t do without it), and then I toggle the visibility icon again and my photo reappears in the dimmed (50% opacity) rendering.

I continue making additonal curved lines (paths) using the ctrl-up-click-ctrl-down method until I am satisfied I have a good trace, then, I need to save this traced file as a BMP. I need it to be a BMP because I will use MSPAINT to print it (it gives me the print preview option and lets me make final adjustments that I don’t know how to do in Photoshop, such as using the box selector to make small movements to areas that I think need a little tweeking).

I *thought* I needed to right-click on my Path icon and select stroke path, and select brush, but I learned that my bmp file was all white. So, now, I read that I need to "select a brush you want, or just the color you want your path in, prior to Stroking your Path". I don’t know what this means. My path is showing up on my screen in solid black – that is the color I want.
I used the Pen tool to draw it, so, what is the meaning of using a brush?

If anyone has followed me to this point, what do I select from which of the many icons so that my bmp I save will have the path I can see staring me in the face shows up just as I see here?

I managed to get it out the HARD way – using Screen Print Gold to put a box around my traced screen (with the layer 0 photo toggled to invisibility) and printing it to Screen-Print;s temp file, from which I can then save as a bmp. That sure seems to me to be unnecessarily complicated – I should be able to get photoshop to save my tracing as a bmp straight away – no?

I admit that the methodology behind photoshop’s interface is very confusing to me. I don’t quite comprehend the theory behind paths as opposed to layers, and strokes as opposed to lines. There are so many icons that I am afraid to accidentally click somewhere because as I am learning that, believe it or not, I have been absolutely flabbergasted to see something totally wierd happen to my screen and I have no idea what I just did. But, I am learning to be very careful where I click and I think I have got the hang now on how to create a line-art tracing (which is what I mainly want to do), but, I would now like to learn how to get it saved. It would be nice if I could get photoshop to enlarge the resulting bmp before saving, but, I suppose that is asking too much.

I see that the bmp photoshop creates for me (all white, of course), is exactly the same pixel size as the bmp that would have been created from my jpg if I had used a conversion program (such as thumbs plus or picture publisher). But that is another subject I’ll tackle later on.

Any help is very much apprectiated. littleberry

On 2006-03-15 19:23:38 +0100, said:

It comes up squished, so I have to use the image>pixel aspect ratio>square to fix that (I wonder why Photoshop doesnt assume square by default?).

About the above. Try File->New and make sure you see the Advanced options to a new File.
On Mac, there’s a checkbox for Advanced. There’s a Pixel Aspect Ratio there. Set that to ‘Square’ and Press OK. Close that new file and check if PS still opens your photographs with wrong Aspect Ratio settings.

For the Pathing stuff.
I tried it out here and I hope I’m following you alright.

I see those ‘about 2 pxl wide paths’ too, they’re not thick black here, more like very dark greyish with a complete white filled layer behind it.
When I create paths on top of a photograph, the path seem to be like Negative colorburn on the photo. But I guess that doesn’t really matter.

When I save those paths without any action to it whatsoever, yeah, I get a white image.
As I tried to point out before, paths aren’t actually pixels. What you see on your screen is a visual representation of something internal in PS, called paths. To make them into pixels, you either fill them out or stroke them. Both of these options are in the contextual rightclick menu on a Path layer.

When you stroke them, you are given a couple of option, e.g. Pencil and Brush. That’s what PS will use to stroke your path with (a.k.a. make them actual pixels). If you for example use a pencil of 1 px colored black, your path will become actual pixels colored black with a max of 1 pixel wide.

The sort of Pencil or Brush which is used to Stroke your Path, is based on the current settings on the resp. Pencil or Brush tool itself. So make sure you have it setup right, before you Stroke your Path.

So recap :

start up PS.

Select the Pencil tool (B). If the tool is on Brush mode, press Shift+B till you see the pencil icon.

Select the form of the pencil in the Tool Options just below your Menubar. Or press Ctrl+[ till the pencilpoint is 1 pixel (till you hardly see it :))

Make sure you have a good visible color, e.g. Black on the Default Color. That’s those two small boxes usually halfway the toolbar. The UPPER box is the default foreground color ofcourse.

Open your photo, do the aspect thingy, the 50% opacity, new layer and make your path in the Path tab.

When you have some, right click the Path and select Stroke Path. Choose Pencil and OK.

Now you can even toss away the path really by pressing Backspace.

Now you’ll see your path as a black line and this is created on the layers tab in your freshly created new layer from before you started to make your path.

Kill the other stuff: delete the photo layer or make them invisible (the little eye). And save it out as a BMP.

Hope this’ll work !

With kind regards,

PS User

I am trying to follow right now, I’ve restarted Photoshop, clicked shift-B until I now see the pencil icon (upper left on the 2nd row of icons).
The next icon says "brush" with a pixel size of 1, followed by another icon that says "Mode" with is Normal, and then Opacity, which is 100%, and then an unchecked box for "autoerase". I don’t see a "Tools Option" anywhere, nor do I see anything that says "pencil form". Pressing CTRL+ doesn’t do anything that I can see. (I used both the numeric keypad + as well as the + about the =).

I guess I’m stuck right here. Until I can find that "tools option" box somewhere, I can’t set the color of my pencil – right? I am not sure what you mean by a "Tool Bar". If that is the box of icons on the left, then I do see the pencil icon, but, clicking doesn’t give me any way to pick a color.

I hate to have to keep digging like this, but, can you help me find that blasted "tools option" thing that is supposed to be just below the meubar? I assume the menubar is the very top row of icons – right? (just underneath the title bar which reads "Adobe Photoshop).

There is a tiny (I mean really TINY) down arrow next to the pencil icon (is that the "tools option"?), but when I click it, I get a gray box that says "no tool presets defined for current tool", with a right arrow to the right, and a tiny tiny icon just below. I clicked both of those, but still didn’t find anywhere to select a color – and I don’t know what a "form" would look like – of course, what I want is so plain and simple, I am really dumbfounded here, I want a plain ordinary PENCIL – black and about 4 pixels in thickness.

If you don’t mind helping get this pencil thing set up so I can save my paths, I would really appreciate it.

littleberry

In article ,
wrote:

I *thought* I needed to right-click on my Path icon and select stroke path, and select brush, but I learned that my bmp file was all white. So, now, I read that I need to "select a brush you want, or just the color you want your path in, prior to Stroking your Path". I don’t know what this means. My path is showing up on my screen in solid black – that is the color I want.

It sounds like you have some conceptual complications facing you.

When you make a path, it is very important to understand that the path has not in any way changed the picture. A picture in Photoshop is made of pixels. When you make a path, you have not changed any pixels at all; the image is exactly as it was.

When you stroke a path, you paint. You change the pixels.

A .bmp file can not contain paths. When you save a .bmp, you remove all the paths. So before you save your .bmp, you must paint over the paths; a .bmp is made of pixels, so you must change the pixels.

When you stroke the path, you paint in whatever the foreground color is; when you stroke the paths, make sure you have selected black as your foreground color.

When you stroke the path, you paint over the path–you change pixels. So if you want your lines to be visible in your BMP, stroke the path, then go into the Paths palette and click off the path. This will turn off the path and let you make sure that you did in fact stroke the path as you intended, then save your BMP.

The BMP should show the paths that you’ve stroked.

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Thanks, tacit. I am trying to do what you suggest, "make sure you have selected black as your foreground color." But I am having trouble doing that. I don’t know if I have more than one "foreground color (in mspaint, of course, that would mean the color you are using to set the pixels with, and this color is displaned at the bottom). But I am starting to thing there is probably many different foregroudn colors in photoshop, depending on whether you have several layers or not. So, I am stumped. First, is there only one foreground color, and is it displaned somewhere so I can see what it is. Second, how do I go about selecting solid black, becuase I am assuming that is comes up in photoshop as white (why photoshop would default the forground color to be white is a real mystery here. There must be a lot of people who use photoshop who wanted it to be white, but, it escapes as why that would be). If there is more than one foreground color, for each layer, as I am guessing, then, how do know which layer I am painting my path into, and how can I get the foreground color for that layer changed to solid black.

This is getting to be very frustrating, but, somehow, I think I’ll eventually get the hang of it – it is just going to take a long time and a lot of headaches. littleberry

I got it! There is a tall narrow box of icons on the left hand side of the screen (I don’t know the name of this icon-set), but, near the bottom, there is a double rectangle which is the foreground/background color selector. By clicking on either rectangle, you get a "color picker" dialogue box, and I did that and my path got changed to a thicker line after I selected "stroke path".

I see why the lines are so thick – I had zoomed a whole lot to get my photo large enough so that i could see the small curves, and, even though the pencil tool is set to 1 pixel, that got zoomed also.

Is there a way to get photoshop to enlarge the pixel size of the resulting bmp from my path, and keep the line size to whatever I have chosen in the pencil selector (2nd row of icons on top)? Say, for instance, my photo is 100X200 pixels coming in, and I blow it up 4X so I can trace over it, and I want it saved as a 400X800 bmp where the lines maintaing their curvature (no zaggies from zooming in on fixed pixels, like mspaint does)? That would be ideal, if it can be done.

Of course, I can work around this by enlarging the photo to the size I need BEFORE I open it in photoshop, but, I would like to have that flexibility within photoshop if I could.

Thanks for the advice about the foreground color.

I am guessing that this foreground color works for ALL layers? Is that right?

Little by little I am picking up on this very complicated application.

littleberry

In article ,
wrote:

I got it! There is a tall narrow box of icons on the left hand side of the screen (I don’t know the name of this icon-set),…

That is your toolbar.

Is there a way to get photoshop to enlarge the pixel size of the resulting bmp from my path, and keep the line size to whatever I have chosen in the pencil selector (2nd row of icons on top)? Say, for instance, my photo is 100X200 pixels coming in, and I blow it up 4X so I can trace over it, and I want it saved as a 400X800 bmp where the lines maintaing their curvature (no zaggies from zooming in on fixed pixels, like mspaint does)? That would be ideal, if it can be done.

Use the Image Size command.

Of course, I can work around this by enlarging the photo to the size I need BEFORE I open it in photoshop, but, I would like to have that flexibility within photoshop if I could.

Thanks for the advice about the foreground color.

I am guessing that this foreground color works for ALL layers? Is that right?

Yes.

—
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