Animated GIF transparent backround

**DGehman** · 26 August 2006, 07:18 PM

Originally Posted by David O'Neil

Perchance she's asking how to make the black background transparent, so her site's background shows up through it?

Taking the xar file and making an everything-default transparent GIF, I get this - the 'white' edges on the right front leg, the chest and snout are, as far as I can tell, just the highlights from the original carved dog photo. There is a slight dark blue fringe (most visible where the left rear leg superposes on the carved dog in the b.g.), but I wouldn't consider this objectionable.

**Egg Bramhill** · 27 August 2006, 01:14 AM

Marcia,

Try this on your site.

**MarciaB** · 27 August 2006, 06:32 AM

Yes, that's exacly what I want, David! I don't want the white fringe on the page, so that's why I've made it non-transparent for now.
Anyway, thanks everybody for taking a look at this!
Marcia

**MarciaB** · 27 August 2006, 06:44 AM

Hello Egg, I've put your dog on the web, see what I mean?
Marcia

**Egg Bramhill** · 27 August 2006, 09:34 AM

Ah yes, now I remember. This was an annoying bug that started with the introduction of XaraX, whereby the background keeps defaulting to white. It's such a long time since I used Xtreme for animations I'd forgotten this one. I'm away for the next 36 hours, but I'll try and do a search on my return to see if we ever found a workaround for this.

**Egg Bramhill** · 27 August 2006, 09:41 AM

Try this one.

**MarciaB** · 27 August 2006, 11:41 AM

Yesss! You did it!

The big Q is now: HOW??? In XaraXtreme??

I tried to manage it in Flash 5 but obviously didn't succeed...
Hope to hear from you in about 34 hours,
Marcia

**Egg Bramhill** · 28 August 2006, 01:45 PM

Hi Marcia,

This is how I cheated!

1: In XaraXtreme, create your transparent animated gif. (Name it 0.gif. It will have white fringes even on a dark blue backgound as you discovered earlier)
2: Select frame 1 and export a transparent (static) gif. (Name=1.gif)
3: Select frame 2 and export a transparent (static) gif. (Name=2.gif)
4: In XaraXtreme Select the "New Animation" icon
5: Import the animated gif named 0.gif.
6: Select frame 1 and import 1.gif. Alt select to select the older gif below & delete.
7: Select frame 2 and import 2.gif. Alt select to select the older gif below & delete.
8: Select "File" / "Export Animated gif", select transparent and export as 4.gif

It sounds more long winded than it actually is, however it's a workaround that we shouldn't need to do. Early versions of XaraX didn't have this bug.

I think your partners carvings are excellent by the way.

**MarciaB** · 28 August 2006, 02:31 PM

A zillion thanks Egg! Why didn't I think of that? I only changed the colour depth to 256 colours because with only 16 he/she lost his/her big smile...

Boy, am I glad I found these forums (fora?) !

Case closed !