Trimming Canvas — Not Working vs. Doing It Wrong

Talk about Pixelmator Pro, share tips & tricks, tutorials, and other resources.
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2020-07-22 20:46:29

Hi. My understanding of Image → Trim Canvas was that I could eliminate transparent pixels around an image. But I can't seem to get it to work.

Here is an image in which I've selected and then deleted the background.

Image

When I click on Trim Canvas absolutely nothing happens. This happens every time I have tried it with my actual images.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks.

Danny
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2020-07-23 08:39:55

Hey Danny. The Trim Canvas feature was designed for some very precise trimming, meaning, the whole area you'll be trimming has to be the same color or transparent throughout. I've downloaded your sample image and noticed that it actually has some colored pixels in the corners (possibly left over from the Smart Erase tool). Although almost invisible, these pixels prevent Trim Canvas from doing its job. Here, I've changed the color of the transparency grid to dark gray to see it a little bit better:

Image

What you can do in cases like these is either crop the image manually, or erase the unnecessary pixels and trim.
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2020-07-24 03:12:20

That certainly makes sense. It begs the question how those pixels could have been left, since I selected everything white (which was the background) and clicked “delete.” That should not have left colored pixels behind.

Thank you.
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2020-07-28 07:31:49

Ah, so you used the Quick Selection or the Color Selection tools to select the background first and then deleted it?
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2020-07-28 15:22:01

Correct.

Danny
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2020-07-31 14:44:05

Got it. Interesting... We'll take a look!