I keep forgetting about this problem, so I never ask.

I want to extract something in photoshop, lets say a man from the background (edit, I am talking about STILL pics here). and save it with the transparent background. I save as a PSD, and drag into vegas, but it never saves the transparent background....how do I make that work?

nevermind, figured out it needed to be saved as a PNG

Ian, you can also drag the psd file into Vegas and it will retain transparency. Just turn off the unwanted layers in Photoshop, leaving just your desired content.

Ian, you can also drag the psd file into Vegas and it will retain transparency. Just turn off the unwanted layers in Photoshop, leaving just your desired content.

see, thats what I was trying to do, and it wasnt working. its allright though, now that I have the PNG thing figured out I am good to go. thanks!

No worries. You just have to make sure that the ONLY layer turned on in Photoshop is the one you want to bring into Vegas. Ah, just occurred to me - not sure when this feature was introduced in Vegas so maybe you have an older version?

If Vegas doesn't see the transparency, you might also try right-clicking the image, going into Properties, and then changing the transparency method.

Edward's suggestion is the main reason I now convert Photoshop files to PNG before bringing them into Vegas :-)

Just a personal preference, but I like to be able to go back to the psd to make adjustments, without going through the additional step saving as png (maybe I'm lazy!!).

I get the impression that some people aren't experiencing the automatic use of transparency with a psd. I seem to be able to just bring them in to Vegas in exactly the state I save the file in Photoshop (ie only selected layers are brought over). Is this a version thing, or maybe a setting in preferences?

Ian, I use Photoshop 7 and always have to adjust the transparency mode in Vegas if I import a PSD file.
I know it's a few more mouse clicks but PNGS work without this problem so I've gotten used to doing it this way.

Here's a way to make it permanent. Drop the PSD on the timeline, right-click it, change the transparency mode, and then click on the little floppy disc icon. From then on it will use that transparency mode automatically.

Hi Mike - if it works it works! No criticism of anyone else's method intended, just curious to learn that some people are bringing 'em straight in while others aren't/can't.

Png would be my first format of choice after psd, or when I have so many images I want to keep file size/memory use down.

I find other users' habits really interesting. I think people would scream to learn that if I am recording a voiceover I don't do it in Vegas - I go out to Cakewalk Sonar, render it there and import the wav into Vegas. Go figure . . . :-)