Convert ico to gif but keep transparancy

**miclus** · 07 July 2009, 09:45 PM

Hi. I was wondering if someone could help me with these icons. They appear transparent already to me in windows explorer. But, in a program I put them in, it gives them this awful black jagged edges around them. So, can anyone convert these two icons to 8 bit 16 x 16 gifs, but make it so that it looks ok no matter what background color it is put on?

Click image for larger version.

Name: duke.png
Views: 373
Size: 3.2 KB
ID: 63273

**Soquili** · 07 July 2009, 09:52 PM

Hi Miclus,

Welcome to Talkgraphics.

Unfortunately what you ask is impossible to do.

Transparent gif images must be antialiased to a background colour so they cannot be used over any colour without some jaggies being evident in many of them.

**SmartEd** · 07 July 2009, 10:00 PM

Do they have to be gifs? .png would do what you want.

**miclus** · 07 July 2009, 11:22 PM

Hi. PNG is fine.

**steve.ledger** · 07 July 2009, 11:37 PM

Welcome to the TG Forums miclus,

I have removed your .zip file and attached a screenshot of your (?) images.

Talkgraphics is a community of like minded members who help others to learn and share their skills and knowledge.

We dont' produce free work on request.

However, if you have Photoshop installed (you have posted in the PS forum so I assume you do?) then it should be a fairly simple process to create what you need yourself but perhaps with some guidance from experienced members?

**miclus** · 07 July 2009, 11:40 PM

Actually, I think it only supports ico, bmp, and gif. Is it possible to make it into a 16 x 16 ico with 8 bits?

**miclus** · 08 July 2009, 01:22 AM

I think I see something in my program. It is asking for the color of the transparancy of my icons. How do I find that out?

**miclus** · 08 July 2009, 04:57 AM

Here is an example of what I mean. On the left is how the icons look in my program at 16 x 16. On the right is how they look in Windows file box. Same background. But, on left, it looks like extra jagged edges on it.

http://duke3d.org/icos.bmp

**steve.ledger** · 08 July 2009, 05:06 AM

It's the nature of 256 colour 8bit .gif
.ico can be from 1bit (2 colours) to 32bit and contains millions of colours, use full or alpha blending transparency - gif cannot.
Best you can do is to match the outer edge pixels with the background they will appear over.
But with your 16x16 pixels pictures, there will always be jaggies where the colour shows much darker than the bg.