Paint Shop Pro Transparent Images

[JQ Johnson]

Kitty Schweyer asks:
>Has anyone had success an creating transparent images
>using Paint Shop Pro

It's pretty easy, actually.  When you create your image file from PSP,
use Save As... rather than save, select GIF format, and click Options
button.  You get several options.  You need GIF 89a format rather than
GIF 87.  If you currently have PSP set with a background color that
matches the color you want to be used for transparency (even if the
"background" of the image is not actually filled with this color), you
can select "set to background color".  You can also get the transparent
color that will be saved from a variety of other sources, hence the list
of options.  I more commonly use a fixed color (white at index 215) for
the background color, and so I often set to palette entry 215.

Note related to this is the use of a web-safe palette.  For all my GIFs
I use a standard 216 color palette that I have saved as a .pal file in
my PSP folder.  I often manipulate in 24-bit color mode, but before
saving a GIF image I do a "load palette" command to get the color set I
want.  Use of the 216-color palette may become less important over the
next year as Microsoft wins the browser wars.

>From the help page:

  GIF Preferences
You set the GIF file preferences from the GIF Preferences Page of the
File Preferences Dialog Box.   A GIF image can contain a transparent
color. You select one of the four transparency options by clicking on
its button or the text. For an explanation of a specific option, click
on it below.
	Maintain Original Transparency
	Do Not Save Transparency
	Set to Background Color
	Set to Palette Entry
  Preview
If you have a GIF image open, clicking on the Preview Button will
temporarily replace the image's transparent color with the current
foreground color.

JQ Johnson                      Office: 115F Knight Library
Academic Education Coordinator  mailto:jqj at darkwing.uoregon.edu
1299 University of Oregon       phone: 1-541-346-1746; -3485 fax
Eugene, OR  97403-1299          http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/