Recording - timelapse with the option to save png with transparent background (alpha channel)

Develop Feature Requests
1

Hi, Krita is a wonderful professional tool! It would be great to be able to save a png with a mask, i.e. an alpha channel (no background) when recording, because then it would be easier to work with the sequence further when compositing with other animations, backgrounds etc.

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2

Hello @Daniel_Bergmann and welcome to the forum :slight_smile:

I didnā€™t realise that the Format: PNG option produced .png images with the transparent background forced to white.
I suppose this is because the Recorder is intended to produce timelapses of paintings rather that ā€˜technicalā€™ output for further development use.

3

Hello, Ahab,

Yes, I understand the original idea of recording the progress of the painting, even that in itself is absolutely great, but as an animator and creator I can immediately imagine many situations where an image is born ā€œunder my handsā€ and then animated together in a complex scene. Or just in a new composition, characters or objects are created at the same time! This is the exact opposite of a mere ā€œtechnicalā€ output :wink:

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4

I used the wrong word :blush:

5

Maybe try to remove the background from the single images before merging them with FFmpeg via batch processor. I think XnConvert, a free cross-platform batch image converter, could be suitable, under Windows possibly also the batch converter of IrfanView, possibly this also works under Linux, IrfanView itself works via WINE under Linux.

Link to XnConvert:

Link to IrfanView:

Michelist

6

Hi Michelist,

I understand, but removing the background just doesnā€™t play any role, it always saves a jpg or png on a white background. I havenā€™t tried exporting the mpeg yet. I take pngs directly from the folder where Krita saves them and use them as full quality image sequences, which is better than mpeg4 for compositing. But thanks for the tip with XnConvert, Iā€™ll definitely check it out.

7

I understood what you meant :slightly_smiling_face:

8

I totally get what you mean. :slightly_smiling_face:

9

You can import the .png sequence with File ā†’ Import Animation Frames.
Then select all the frames and do Filter ā†’ Colours ā†’ Colour to Alpha with the Multiframe option enabled.
Then Render the frames out as a .png sequence.
This has difficulties if the painted content has pale colours but a careful Threshold adjustment can deal with that.

10

JPGā€™s have no transparency, PNGā€™s can have, so I thought letā€™s remove the background. With PNGā€™s this is possible.
I thought it could be a way, but Ahabā€™s solution is way more comfortable, but would achieve the same.

Michelist

11

Thanks for the ideas, but thereā€™s a problem here when you have images in, for example, watercolor, which is semi-transparent. Now I solve it by putting the sequence as a multiply, only you have to take into account that the colors ā€œadd upā€ with the background. Or you can sprout white in compuser (Davinci Resolve), but itā€™s not ideal, just because of the semi-transparent colorsā€¦

3 Likes
12

It would certainly be an interesting option, but the devil is in the details: Do you want this while painting on an image with a background, or while painting on an image with a transparent background? The recorder saves the projection, the realized canvas image, so the former would be harder.

13

Thanks for the quick response Halla! I WANT to thank you for your great work on Krita!!!

The first option would be absolutely brilliant, of course, but the second would definitely do, at least for starters. Itā€™s better to draw with a background than without, specifically with semi-transparent colors, but you can live with transparent backgrounds too :slightly_smiling_face:

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