Trouble opening .png on Mac

[mahogny]

I recently bought a Mac, after being a Windows user. I'm very familiar with the Windows version of Photoshop elements 4, and bought the Mac version at the time I bought the Mac. But I've encountering some problems, and hope that someone will be able to help me.

Specifically, I'm having trouble opening .png files. I do digital scrapbooking, and a lot of the embellishments are .png. I had no trouble opening them with the Windows version, but with the Mac version, when I try to open a .png, I get a popup that says, "Photoshop Raw Options", then I have to type in such things as height, and some other things I'm not quite sure what they refer to. What am I supposed to do? When I try to type in some sizes, the resulting image is just a big grey blob - not at all what the embellishment is supposed to look like.

Can someone please help me? These files had no trouble opening in Windows, but Mac is befuddling me!


Thanks!!

[frank abramonte]

I don't have the answer but this may be of some help:

http://kb.iu.edu/data/aekl.html

[Teacher617]

Let's try something ... with the file closed, control-click on it (the same as right-click, if you have a 2-button mouse). Find where it says, OPEN WITH and navigate to open with PSE. Do you get the same result as you described in your original post?

Tricia

[mahogny]

Yes, I do. Some of the blanks are now filled in on the "Photoshop Raw Options" popup, but the end result is the same; the opened file is just a grey blob.

I know the files are intact on the hard drive, because they open just fine with Finder.

[Teacher617]

With PSE open, go to the Photoshop Elements menu at the top of the screen (next to the blue apple), and drop down to "About Plug-in". Do you see a list there? If so, is PNG included?

My list is quite lengthy and contains PNG. If it's missing from yours, this may be why your PSE isn't handling these file types correctly - the plug-in is missing.

You can confirm this by going into your hard drive: Applications>Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0>Plug-ins>File Formats. You should see a PNG plug-in listed, along with several others.

I will defer to those who remember more than me ... but the last time this came up on this forum, the user had to reinstall PSE to get the plug-ins installed correctly, including png.

Tricia

[mahogny]

I have four plug ins as listed in the photoshop elements dropdown:

ASM
ASDataStreams
Camera Raw
PNG Icon Parser

I checked the hd, and I do have a png plugin installed, along with 10 others.

[Teacher617]

For some reason, the png plug-in that you see on your hard drive isn't showing up when PSE is active. I can suggest one more thing, then the only idea I have left is to uninstall PSE and reinstall it.

With PSE closed: In that plug-ins folder on your hard drive, drag the png plug-in out of its current location, onto your desktop. Do NOT trash it. Then, drag it back INTO the same folder where you got it. I'm hoping that the effect is the same as "reinstalling" it. You may even want to restart your computer. Then try opening a png file and see what results.

Keeping my fingers crossed ... Tricia

[mahogny]

Success!

I tried what you suggested, and it didn't work, so I just threw in the towel and uninstalled and then reinstalled. It worked! I guess it burped the first time.

Strange, that's something I normally expect of installing things in Windows! ;)

Thank you very much for all your help!!!

[Teacher617]

Great! So glad you got it working! Now you can go ahead and just create ... looking forward to seeing your scrapbook pages!

:)
Tricia