Making it clear as glass!

PSP 6 has a new method of creating transparent GIF's which is very powerful and easy to use. Let's go through it one time, and I'll give a brief description as we go. This example converts a .PSP image to a transparent GIF, showing both solid and dithered shadows. (The JASC symbol on the original page is an example of a dithered shadow.)

Note that this image is a 16.7 million color image, created in PSP, on two layers, with a transparent background, and a semi-transparent shadow. This will be converted to a GIF image using the new abilities of PSP6.

Click on File- Export- Transparent GIF. DO NOT convert to 256 colors or Flatten the image, the Export will do that!

Notice that the Transparent GIF Save control box comes up, and we've got two ways to proceed. We can control everything manually, or we can use the wizard. (bottom left)

For the first demo, we'll go through the wizard, so click on 'Use Wizard'

On page 1 of 5 of the wizard, the color that will become transparent is selected. In this case, "Use existing transparent areas" is selected because the original image has a transparent area in the image.

For manual operations in the Wizard there is a swatch in the middle which allows setting the color manually. (I don't recommend this, since the exact color isn't known when converting the image. If you've got to use this, then the manual method of Export- Transparent Gif is recommended.)

The Wizard asks you to identify the color of the background. The reason for this is for the wizard to make an intelligent decision for converting the transparent area of the original image.

Since the original image contains a transparent shadow, defining the background as white will set the shadow color as Gray. Set Gray for a black shadow. Setting the background color as blue would define the shadow color as dark blue.

Here, you must decide to use all 256 colors or a sub-set for older Net Scape browsers. Make your selection based upon your estimate of the people that will be viewing your image.

Make a guess at the number of colors in the palette, from 256 to a minimum number. For the Wizard, I recommend max. For less colors and a smaller image, use the manual mode where you'll have access to dual images showing before and after images for the size of the image.

* If you see 'Bands' of color in the ball, your display is set to 16 bit color or less! To see smooth gradients of color, set your display to Real Color, 24 bit or better.

Now we see the final image and decide if it's what we want. The size of the image is displayed under the image. We could return to the previous step and lower the no. of colors to see what difference would be made in the size. Note that the 24 bit color image has been converted to 8 bit and transparent areas set according to the background color selected.

If the image is to your satisfaction, click Finish to go into the "Save As" dialogue.

Using the Export Transparent GIF with manual settings.

In the manual mode, the Before/After images are always in view, so changes may be seen immediately. The input/output file sizes are seen under the images. Tabs allow fast switching between sections to create an optimized image. In the Transparency Tab, the transparent color is selected.

Since this example is converting a 24 bit color image into an 8 bit image, and the original was in Native Mode transparency, setting Existing Image or Layer Transparency will transfer the transparency from one mode to the other.

The next two modes don't care about current transparency or even colors, since the transparency is set either inside or outside a selection.

Note: If the original image contains no transparent colors, this page may be skipped!

I've been using a non-blurred shadow up to this point, but I blurred it to demonstrate the next feature: Error Diffusion Dither. Look at the shadow in the output image. By dithering the transparent section, medium to large shadows may be created that can match any background. The background shows through the dithering, making the shadow to appear as a blend of the colors.

Error Diffusion spreads the dithering as to the amount of shadow transparency in the original.

50% dither mixes 50% shadow shade and 50% transparency, which creates a sharp edged shadow. (compare the next image.)

Now we get down to compressing the image. This is where we can select the different modes of color and the actual number of colors used.

The four color modes are:

Existing Palette- If the current image is a gif being set to transparent.

Standard/Web Safe- the preset limited palette used in older browsers (Net Scape).

Optimized Median Cut- Uses the Options box to the right, if a selection is made in the original image to boost the creation of custom colors from the selection. Dropping to less than 256 colors from 16.7 million means that some colors are going to be lost, and others made up from dithering of different colors. By boosting colors from a selection, you can be confident that the colors within the selection will be more likely to be in the finial palette.

Optimized Octree- Uses the number of colors in the image to create an optimized palette.

By clicking on the rightmost arrow in the "How Many Colors Do you want?" and dragging the arrow up and down the slider, you can view the image vs the size in the output image. During the creation of the images for this tutorial, I've been setting the number to different settings and obtaining output file sizes of between 4k and 8k for the image.

90 colors in the palette, Optimized Octree generates a fairly good gradient in the ball.

When you have the image to the size and looks you want, clicking OK takes you to the Save As routine, with the save mode set to the correct GIF format.