Maddening!!! Transparent Background Problems

[gnurf]

My quick and dirty trick to keep it as simply as possible.

1) select a black & white bitmap (or grayscale)

2) open bitmap gallery and select the same image in the list

3) click transp in the bitmap gallery

optional steps:

4) if there are visible white jaggies around the edges, select transparency tool

5) set the transparency profile to Profile1

You are done!

[haakoo]

Hi,

with b&w pictures there's an easyer way
-just only apply stained glass transparency.
-export as png(true color+alpha,you'll get 2 errors about transparency will not hold but when clicked,it does.

Hans

[handrawn]

just about covered the field here I think.
John agree - the edges are a bit ragged in 2 color bitmaps - and infact all 256 color transparent exports without 'fringe' - nature of the beast [edit]

Scott and Egg - yes I'd agree [hand tracing] vectorisation is a good way to get the best result internally.
[EDIT - having said that - in a high contrast black and white image such as this, if resizing upwards is not an issue bitmap methods should work fine and quicker]
- the real problem here as I understand it is how do you export it cleanly.

As Egg covered in post #19 it's a problem that has been around for ages.

The best export solution is the png true color + alpha export as mentioned by Hans [Hakoo] and myself - BUT - Microsoft do not support transparent png's in IE6 and before and a lot of people still use Internet Explorer 6.
There is a fix but its technical.

[handrawn]

Paul - I like that method of transparency

Can also use the mehdi eraser classic live effect that comes with xara.

Mpaige - I have never got Sean's plugin to work either

[Egg Bramhill]

Scott and Egg - yes I'd agree [hand tracing] vectorisation is

Steve ~ I should have pointed out that this one was done via Vector Magic which I consider excellent for this type of logo type imagery. Anything that you'd normally export as a gif seems to vector very well in V.M.

[handrawn]

yes Egg its good is VM, once you've learnt how to use it.

thanks for the clarification

[David O'Neil]

...I should have pointed out that this one was done via Vector Magic...

Here's a Xara trace, with a little Xara cleanup performed on it. The point being that it can be entirely handled within Xara with decent results if you know what you are doing. (I would agree, though, that the shape isn't as good as the VM result.)

[handrawn]

done in inkscape - no cleanups - just default trace setting

[David O'Neil]

Here's a Xara one without any cleanup, created from a monochrome copy of the bitmap. The file size is due to the bitmaps that I haven't erased. I think the vector is about as good as the VM one.

[BONES]

Before going off half-cocked, I noticed that you have the image in .ai format, right? Can you import it OK in Xara? If so, is it a vector file [it looks to me like it is]? If it is, then you should only need to ungroup it once or twice and delete the background. You can then save it as a .xar file, or export it as a .ai file or a bitmap. The only bitmap format that Xara supports with proper alpha channels is PNG.

If the .ai is just a bitmap, then you just need to do as has been suggested - position the image over the background, select the Transparency tool. From the Drop-Down that shows "Mix", select either "Stained Glass" or "Darken". You can then export your composited image as any kind of bitmap you need. The only limitation of using transfer modes is that you cannot add things like a drop-shadow or glow to the edge of the girls.

If you want to do a proper job of removing the pixels around the silhouette, you would be better off using an Image Editor like Photoshop, where you can use a magic wand tool to select all the white pixels and delete them. The other advantage of doing it in another application is you will have a broader range of options for saving the file with an alpha channel - PNG, TGA, TIF, or PSD.