As you will have noticed, this page uses a coloured background.
Now it may be that you would like to use a GIF on this background, but don't want the image to be "square". Mainstream photo editing applications such as Paint Shop Pro often have tools installed for creating transparent backgrounds.
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In this version, you can clearly see the black background, which does not look very professional! |
See how much more realistic this looks... |
You can also do this with Microsoft Photo Editor, which usually comes installed as part of Microsoft Office. It will be well hidden though, so you will have to find it first using Start >> Search >> PhotoEd.exe
Click on the icon 
to start Photo Editor. When it loads, open up your image file. (Remember that transparency only works with .gifs. If you are starting with a .jpg, you will have to save it as a .gif first.)
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Image is opened ready for editing. |
You then choose which of the colours you want to be transparent, using the colour picker tool (the middle tool on the furthermost right-hand section of the toolbar - in between a "sun" and a rotating square). You can choose whether to apply transparency to ONLY that colour, or within a similar range.
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Here we have chosen to make the almost-black background transparent. |
After the tool is applied, the parts of the image that will be transparent will appear as a grey-and-white check.
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Transparency applied - the background will now "disappear"! |
If you don't want "holes" in your .gif, it's best to ensure that the background is a completely different colour from any of the other colours within the picture itself. You may have to re-colour the background first, using MS Paint or similar, then apply the transparency.
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Effective results can be achieved when combining transparency and animation, like these fireworks. Digital photos of some real fireworks were cropped, saved as gifs, had transparency applied and finally, animated using Ulead Gif Animator. |
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Comments? c.nyssen@abcol.ac.uk |
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