Seeing Transparency

As I mentioned, transparency works when you can’t see it. That can make transparency a challenge to work with. For instance, how do you tell the difference between transparency and white? Photoshop solves that conundrum by displaying transparency as a checkerboard grid (Figure 13.1). You can adjust the size and color of the grid squares in the Transparency and Gamut panel of the Preferences dialog box (Figure 13.2). If you don’t see the checkerboard pattern, it means the entire document area is opaque. Individual layers may have partial transparency, but when you put together all the layers, the entire document area is covered.

Figure 13.1. The checkerboard indicates that an area is transparent on every layer in the document. White areas are opaque white.