Transparent backgrounds

Discussion of photography, editing and publishing techniques
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stuifzand
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Post by stuifzand »

TheBohrok wrote:I have a question, do you have to have Photoshop to make
transparent backgrounds?
I think you can use most of the imagingsoftware to do that.
What you have to do is save the image as a .gif and make sure "background transperacy" or something like that is on.
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J1A3L5
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Post by J1A3L5 »

TheBohrok wrote:I have a question, do you have to have Photoshop to make
transparent backgrounds?
I just a few minutes did my current avatar, and it involved transparent backgrounds, although wasn't "finished" on one. I did it in Macromedia Fireworks. Photoshop is simply an extremely high-level program for doing it: There's many programs which will give you the same end result.
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TheBohrok
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Post by TheBohrok »

I have a program called PhotoSuite II and I saved an image as .gif but I didn't see anything about transparent backgrounds. Is there still a way to do it?
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jamitjames
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Post by jamitjames »

TheBohrok wrote:I have a question, do you have to have Photoshop to make
transparent backgrounds?
I hope there is, that would be very nice.
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Bricksidge
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Post by Bricksidge »

Yes, this function can be done easily with GIMP.

Don't know about GIMP yet? Learn about it here.

First, create a new file (File > New)

Now create a new Layer (Layer > New)

In another window, copy-paste the image you are wanted to creat a trans-back for into this new file. Use the "select contiguous regions" tool (aka Magic Wand) to select the areas of the picture than you want to delete, and then press "Delete" on your keyboard. Continue to do this, until you are satisfied.

Now, select the "Layers" tab on the rightmost GIMP box. Click on the background layer (the one without your image), right click it, and scroll down to "Delete" and click it.

You should now see the image you want, and the part you want transparent should be a dark gray checkerbox.

Now go to Image > Mode and select "Indexed" Using the default settings should work fine.

Finally, save your image as a GIF (see here to learn how to do that, if you don't already)

You should now have an image with a transparent background, yippie!
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TheBohrok
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Post by TheBohrok »

Ok thanks Bricksidge. Yes, I read about gimp but I already had software to edit my pics but now I'm downloading gimp
to my computer. Thanks
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Lord_Of_The_LEGO
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Post by Lord_Of_The_LEGO »

Bricksidge wrote:It's because Jojo's is a Gif.

In photoshop, go to File > Export as GIF (or something, writing from memory here)
Reviving an old (but helpful topic)...

So, how is this done in Photoshop CS? How can I save my Photoshop file as a GIF?

Thanks for the help...
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Gumby
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Post by Gumby »

Lord_Of_The_LEGO wrote:Reviving an old (but helpful topic)...

So, how is this done in Photoshop CS? How can I save my Photoshop file as a GIF?

Thanks for the help...
I'm no Photoshop expert (I wish I was), but in Photoshop CS, you'd select "Save for web" under the file menu. On the next screen, on the right side there are a bunch of options you can change, including one dropdown list that can specify the file format (gif, jpg, etc).

Hope that helps!
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Graynar
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Post by Graynar »

If you've seen my computer enhanced moc pictures, you'll notice I used MS paint to edit them.

http://photos23.flickr.com/33700998_aa099bc603.jpg?v=0 for example.

Is MS paint a bad system to use for this kind of thing? Or is this post going to get deleted for having no purpose?

Graynar
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