Animated gifs and transparency

[Stewart]

I am trying to make a transparent animated gif, which apparently I can't with XARA X, but can anyone help? I can't believe that the 'new' xara can't do this, and if it can't, I may be looking for a refund to buy something else.

Transparent gifs are no problem BTW

Regards
Stewart

[Stewart]

I am trying to make a transparent animated gif, which apparently I can't with XARA X, but can anyone help? I can't believe that the 'new' xara can't do this, and if it can't, I may be looking for a refund to buy something else.

Transparent gifs are no problem BTW

Regards
Stewart

[diniel]

If you create your animated GIF with a brackground of #fffffe you can then use something other than Xara to designate #fffffe as the transparent colour

I did the following GIF in Xara X and then set the background colour to be transparent by using "Microsoft GIF Animator" (ages of software, from 1996!)

[Stewart]

Daniel,

Thanks for that, and I must admit that I have a couple of programmes, OLD programmes that would do the job. I just couldnt believe that i couldnt set a transparency in such a new one that I waited and waited for.

You never know, there may be a way to do it in the programme, or else its an editing job in imageready.

Many thanks
Stewart

[diniel]

While browsing through Xara's help file to see if I had missed a dialogue box or options tab somewhere, I did come across a page which seems to be outdated now - I couldn't find the features it talked about (method of switching frames, either Nothing, Background, Leave As Is or Restore Previous).

If it helps Xara to weed it out, the title was "Animated GIF Export Dialog Box - Animation Restore"

[diniel]

I remember upgrading an old version of Xara, perhaps it was from v1.1 to v1.2, when you could first export animated GIFs

Repeat this process and you can export a transparent animated GIF from Xara X:

* Create an image
* Create a bitmap copy of it (CTRL+SHIFT+C)
* Modify your image
* Create a bitmap copy of it (CTRL+SHIFT+C)
* Press F11 to open Bitmap Gallery
* Highlight your two bitmaps
* Press Save
* Select Background in the "Restore" field
* Tick the Transparent button, and export the animation. Hey presto, you have an animated GIF out of Xara which is transparent too.

If it can be done this long winded way, surely it proves that the software is CAPABLE of it - why not enable transparency the proper way round?

Oh, and if you think you'll start using this feature more - remember why we love the Frames feature so, if your two frames for the bitmap are different in their dimensions then the animation will jump from side to side - remember to put a no-colour box around your bits and pieces before creating bitmap copies of them.

I remember how wonderful I thought the world was once I could create an animated GIF and then be able to go back and modify the original vector and re-export immediately. It means that the above method is not ideal, but if you really really NEED to do it, it's possible

(This means that my original message about the Help being out of date is wrong, but there is a different error - clicking on HELP in this bitmap export window and then clicking on Transparency takes you to the Interlacing page on the help ... as does Interlacing)

[This message was edited by Daniel on December 17, 2000 at 04:42 PM.]

[Mark Goodall]

Creation of both transparent animated GIFs and highly compressed non-transparent animated GIFs will feature in the next release.

Constructive contributions to the forum raised this an issue.
Thanks.

Mark Goodall
Xara Ltd

[ED]

Don't you just love how Xara listens to it's customers and just keeps making an excellent product even better. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Thanks Xara

The BEST is good enough!

[Stewart]

Thanks for that Mark, but it didnt help with the current (? one week old?) version I have.

How long will this worthwhile upgrade cost? LOL!

And more to the point, knowing Xara, when will it be !!!

[Mark Goodall]

Zero cost, and we hope to deliver the download
with the new feature before Christmas.

Mark Goodall
Xara Ltd