Thursday, May 19, 2011

Want that background to be transparent?

Good morning friends. Another quick tip for images. Ever found a great image but the white background was in the way of using it with your blog or webpage b/c yours does not have a white background? You need the image background to be transparent. Go here: PIXLR to get that effect. Choose Open Image From Computer. On the right side of the page is a grey box LAYERS with a little padlock. Double-click that little padlock to unlock the image's background. Next, on the left side of the page in TOOLS choose the little Magic Wand Tool. It is gold with a purple tip, looks like a firecracker sparkler. Third tool from the top. Go to the image and click on the background. This will make little dotted lines swim around that area on the image. On your computer, click your Delete key and that area will now be filled with grey and white checkerboard- now the background is transparent! Repeat this until every area of the background has been made transparent. Cool! On the upper left of that page click Save. In the new box, be sure to select PNG(Transparent, full quality) and then Save the image to your computer. Name it something like TRANS PNG so it will be easy to recognize. To see an example, follow the link below my signature.

Here is an an example. Since my blog page is white, I will use grey to illustrate. A lot of blogs and webpages are colored and not white. This is a butterfly image from The Graphics Fairy. The first image shows the white background of the button against the grey- this is a jpg file. The next image shows that same butterfly with the background deleted and saved as a transparent png file. Now the grey page shows around the whole image. If you are going to use this image as a design element, such as creating a web header, when you paste it in your editor choose transparent selection from your editor's Select menu.

This works easiest with images with a solid color background. Images with nature scenes and other many-layered backgrounds involve much more complicated processes. 'Hope this information will be helpful to you all.

Danice G.

3 comments:

Cindy Adkins said...

Hi Danice,
SO nice to meet you! And what a fabulous technique...I've got to try it!!
XO
Cindy

Cindy Adkins said...

Hi Danice,
I tried to copy your instructions so I could try this, but copying is disabled. I am wondering, would you mind emailing me the instructions--I have been dying to learn how to make a png file and take backgrounds out. I use photoshop. My email is Cindylou_20@hotmail.com
XO
Cindy

Danice G said...

Cindy, I will send the isntructions to you in a sec. Check your email soon :)