Wierd PNG problem

Gopher_By_Fende · 29 Jan 2007 at 10:18

Ok, bear with me, this is going to take some explaining.

At my office i have a Datacard SP75 card printer, used for printing ID cards for our customers. I have recently redesigned our company ID card to take advantage of the high quality print. I made a new template image in Illustrator, and exported the file to a PNG file. i then took the photo of the person the card is for, and erased the background and saved it as a PNG so that our markings would go behind their head. (See example)

The problem i am having is that every time i try to print this card, the photo is missing. If i change the photo to another format (jpg, bmp) then it prints fine, but the background is white not transparent. I also tried changing the format of the template to jpg and leaving the photo as png but it still doesn't print the photo.

I contacted Datacard a while ago, and they seemed completely stumped by it. Does anyone know what could be causing this wierd problem. It only seems to be a problem when i try to print a PNG file with transparency on it.

Any help would be greatly appriciated.

Gopher

Sherbs · 29 Jan 2007 at 10:50

Tried printing as a PDF? Transparency is always a problem. Don't know why this is happening though.

Mark M · 29 Jan 2007 at 12:50

Any more pics of the above worker? I need to look into the problem a little more closely

Gopher_By_Fende · 29 Jan 2007 at 13:32

lmao, i never tire of showing that picture to people, if only to make them feel like a dirty old man when i reveal that the picture is of a 14 year old girl who happened to be the daughter of one of our former employees!! :eek:

Whitestar · 29 Jan 2007 at 13:42

You sure the Printer supports png format. I ask, because I have a card printer here at work. Although the card design software supports png, the printer doesn't know how to handle the data and just prints a white box. Thats what the support from the printer company told me anyway.

Gopher_By_Fende · 29 Jan 2007 at 14:32

yeah thats the odd thing. the template is saved as png, and imported as the background image into publisher. i then add a couple of text boxes and the png photo file on top and print. everything prints but the photo. the only difference i can see between the two pngs is that the photo has transparency on it.

Mark M · 29 Jan 2007 at 16:38

Gopher_By_Fende said:
lmao, i never tire of showing that picture to people, if only to make them feel like a dirty old man when i reveal that the picture is of a 14 year old girl who happened to be the daughter of one of our former employees!!

Must be legal by now :eek: