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Would anyone happen to know how to make a semi-transparent image is PSP? I know it is possible in Photoshop with confusing alpha channels and such, but I'm sure there must be any easier way. When I say semi-transparent I mean, I would like to be able to make an image with a drop shadow transparent without making the shadow completely opaque or having lots of unessasary fuzz. I've seen these types of images before, I just can't figure out how to create them.
New Member (No PMs)
Would anyone happen to know how to make a semi-transparent image is PSP? I know it is possible in Photoshop with confusing alpha channels and such, but I'm sure there must be any easier way. When I say semi-transparent I mean, I would like to be able to make an image with a drop shadow transparent without making the shadow completely opaque or having lots of unessasary fuzz. I've seen these types of images before, I just can't figure out how to create them.
Member
Partial transparancy is not allowed in a Gif file. Either a pixel is transparent or it isn't. However, having said that...you can make a gif reasonably transparent, but it is always going to show a bit of blended color (whatever color you choose as the background in the Gif Transparancy exporter, which is located under File - Export.
Your best bet would be to save the file you created on a transparent background as a Tif file. Tif files support one alpha channel per image if you choose LZW, Packbits or Uncompressed for the compression rate.
Hemera's Photo Objects uses the Tif format for their objects.
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Joelle
The sandcastles of our lives are nothing when compared to the tides of our destinies.
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If the main purpose of using a .gif file is for the web, then there most certainly is a way to make your image (or parts of it) have transparent qualities.
It's actually quite simple.
On a layer, make a grid of pixels of alternate colours, one the colour of your background and the other transparent (or simply omit to apply a colour). The result should be a very fine chequerboard effect. Move this selection over your image and you'll see that only the pixels that are transparent will allow the underlying image to show through. Save the file as a .gif and make sure that the solid/background colour in your image is rendered as transparent.
Now when you use this in a web page, you'll see that whatever is underneath it will show through. The size of the grid can be altered to give various degrees of opacity. This is not a perfect method but it works pretty well. Forget alpha transparency in web pages, they're really not ready for the .png file format yet.
Hope this helps...
Greg.
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