Wierd PNG problem

[Gopher_By_Fende]

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

 

[Gopher_By_Fende]

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!!

 

[Gopher_By_Fende]

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.