Making background transparant

[Richard Verbeek]

Hello from Amsterdam,

I have a .jpg picture that I want to make transparant. Unfortunately, I do not have the .png version so making it transparant from the 'source' is not possible.

Within Xara 4.0 I click on the image, than select with the right mouse 'optimize photo'. I make it a png file and set the amount of color to 256. I choose with the color selector the white color within the picture and after that I press on 'make selecter color transparant'. Within 'options' I have marked 'transparant'.

But when I click on optimize, nothing happens, the white color does not become transparant. What am I doing wrong ?

Richard Verbeek

[handrawn]

a very good question

it will work if you use bitmap copy[you need to press preview to update the view] but not it seems with photo optimise..... hummmm - possibly linked to the 'non-destructive' nature of photo optimise - bitmap copy makes a brand new bitmap

[iamtheblues]

Hi Richard,
I imported your picture into Xara Xtreme, gave it a stained glass transparency then exported it as .png - in the colour palette tab
I chose "True Colour With Alpha". No need to choose "optimise photo".
Saludos,
Bob.

[handrawn]

true enough Bob - how do the file sizes compare - that way usually produces bigger files, but it will look better?

EDIT - stained glass can affect the saturation of the original - but then converting to 256 colors has overheads of its own

Welcome to TG Richard

[David O'Neil]

Is there any reason not to use the Medhi eraser classic live effect on this? If you do, you will need a large tolerance for this picture--at least in the 60s. Or pull it into the Gimp, use the magic wand and selection tools, and create a transparent png from it.

[handrawn]

reckon mehdi would do the job too David - as would various other optional plugins - reckon with mehdi classic a tolerance of around 90-100 should do it

[iamtheblues]

XXPro stained glass - left and PSP Magic wand - right.
Both png are under 25kb. Have to favour the PSP version
which leaves the colours unaffected.
Saludos,
Bob.