How are transparent backgrounds created in Photo and Graphics Designer 9?

[artsmith]

Hi There, 'artsmith' here from Dunedin near the foot of New Zealand's South Island at 45 deg. south.

I create transparent overlays to feature in films I have created. The usual format is white lines of various thicknesses against a transparent background. What I wish to achieve is those lines only, plus such other detail as I elect to use against a transparent background which allows digital stills and live movie material to continue in the meantime under the 'overlays' and remain visible at all times. Previously I have used Ulead's 'Photo-Impact 11', but that is pixel and not vector-based, and material had to be created on enormous rasters to keep pixellation at bay.

Since I intend to use 'Xara' for as many graphics functions as I can, I would like to be able to produce this effect, without leaving 'Xara', and running the risk of creating the pixellation I am trying so hard to avoid. This surely must be possible and I would welcome any 'pointers'. I might add, that I have used 'Xara' in several of its versions and am not exactly a 'Bunny' with it, as I am partway through animating frame-by-frame the breakup of Gondwanaland, (The Great Southern Continent), beginning at 250m years ago. That is a side interest which has developed from an interest in Palaeo-Geography. It is also relevant to my present five-year documentary project, because all of our country's bird-life has migrated to NZ from there; 'Zealandia' the world's eighth continent, of which New Zealand, as well as New Caledonia are almost the only visible parts, having been 'drowned' between 63m years ago and 43m years ago.

Previously I have traced, in multiple layers over material downloaded from 'Google Earth', very successfully as it happens. Irrespective of the format I do my graphics in, usually 3840 x 2160
or 'twice full-size' it will finally be used at the High Definition screen-size of 1920 x 1080, if that is any help.

If you have any suggestions, I would be grateful to hear of them.

[handrawn]

hi welcome

what file format do you want to export your graphics as

[handrawn]

ok I think you modified your post whilst I was replying...

in principle, as xara is an object oriented workspace, objects you create are all seperate [unlike a canvas] and so they will all have transparent backgrounds when you export them, with a couple of caveats:

1] you need to use a file format that supports this [hence my first question]

2] you need to make sure you export in the right way, so as not to pick up any of the other objects that have been placed behind the ones you want - again this tends to be export file type specific

[handrawn]

as a default you can select only the objects you want to export and then export them as PNG making sure in options that you have color depth set 'true color plus alpha'

[handrawn]

and finally if you want vector you could try svg or pdf [depending on your intended use] but in these cases you would need to keep all your lines within the page area [you can adjust the size of this] and hide any objects you don't want to export maybe by having them on a separate layer and hiding this before export

[Egg Bramhill]

Welcome artsmith.

.... as I am partway through animating frame-by-frame the breakup of Gondwanaland, (The Great Southern Continent), beginning at 250m years ago

It's about time it was finished after all that time

[artsmith]

Thanks for the suggestions 'Handrawn'. Sorry about the 'edit', which was to separate two paragraphs with no space between.
I have always used the 'png' format for exports, since I understand that is the best for transparency. Previously, when my graphics were more primitive than they are now, I used to create a graphic by copying in 'png' only the layers which made up my composite images, as 'clipboard' items into Ulead 'Photo-Impact', then 'copy-by-colour' only the contents I wished to keep.
At first I used the video 'chroma-blue', as used in blue (or green-screen) imaging in video processes, selected-by-colour', then dragged my image onto a pre-prepared transparent background which is available as an 'option' in that software, but that immediately produced the unwanted pixellation artefacts I had been trying hard to avoid, hence the need to work on a large-scale, then allow the video editor software to reduce the scale of the overlay to the size I wanted by using 'size-and-position' in the video editor's 'effects'.

I will try what you have suggested, and keep you posted as to progress, or possibly the lack-of-it.

[artsmith]

Be assured, my friend, that there are no quick and easy options, when frame-by-frame animating anything which has taken place on a global scale. My last animation, also using 'Xara', took me five months with single frames at about 2 million year intervals. The problem is visualisation. It is very easy when working near the equator, but a bloody nightmare when working close to the poles as a both north and south poles, hypothetical pin-points, become lines right across the full width of the map in rectangular projection. Even then, the process is reasonably straight-forward and much can be done 'by-eye', without any measurement. The almost insurmountable problems occur when land-masses cross through the polar regions. The break-up of Gondwanaland is not one of the really difficult ones, since it was more or less centred over the present-day south pole, anyway and all movements are outwards from that as a centre. For a real thrill, try a first-ever animation, by flicking through the frames quickly, and see South America begin to split, and break-away from it's attachment to Africa, or India dump Madagascar as 'surplus baggage' off the African coast and roar away northwards until its collision with Asia and the up-thrust of the Himalayas.

[handrawn]

ok if you are using chroma then unless your editor will import vector PNG with alpha is good good bet

[PSD is a possibility; uncompressed TAGA or TIFF better but xara does not do these latter two with alpha and all three are very high in file size]

if you want to export an image of 3840 x 2160 then in order to avoid the pixelation important to create your vector lines at the right size ie: 40 inches by 22.5 inches at the default export dpi [96]

[artsmith]

Plus, I might have added, perhaps, then project it onto a spinning globe and have both animation and spinning proceed together, or better, add phases of 'day' and 'night'. Useful software to assist that, is 'G-Plates' which produces a 'native' transparent background, or 'Celestia' run at a speed of your choice and captured off screen as it 'runs'. Plus, a huge thanks to NASA, and for Palaeo-Geographic images of the world during the last 600m years, Colorado Plateau Geo-Systems of the USA.