dannycufc

I'm looking to make some images I have transparent so that I can use them as backgrounds for some webpages. I have Adobe but I'm a novice when it comes to photoshop, not a clue what I'm doing! If anyone could recommend some software where I can easily make my images transparent or either explain how I can do it in Adobe Photoshop I'd be really grateful. Thanks!

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caribiner23

You can do it in Photoshop. When you open a new image, select "transparent" as your background, then build your graphics. You have to export it as a GIF in order to preserve the background transparency.

Here is a link to a pretty cool site with Photoshop tutorials.

dannycufc

Your talkng to a complete Photoshop novice here! Don't mean to be dumb, but cant find how to do that at all. I have the image I wan't opened in Photoshop, now what do I do? Sorry to be a bit slow!

Dman33

No problem dannycufc. Everyone has to crawl before they walk! Now, this should get you going in the right direction...

Say you have a graphic of a baseball. The image is a square image with a blue background and the baseball is in the middle. You want to make that background transparent so you can put the baseball on a webpage without the blue background.

First thing you would do is open the image in photoshop. I would then use the magic wand tool and select the blue area. Now I would right-click in the selected area and chose 'Select Inverse'. Now the baseball is selected (not the blue area.) I would then CTRL+C (copy)

Now go to File -> New. You will be prompted with a window that has info about the new file type like Name, Image Size etc...

The size is automatically the appropriate size for the data that you have in the clipboard. In other words, the size of the baseball you have selected and chose to copy. Now, at the bottom you have 'Contents'. Make sure Transparent is selected and click OK. You will now have a new image that looks like a grey checkerboard. That means it is transparent. Press CTRL+V to paste the contents in the clipboard into the transparent image and you will see your baseball floating in the checkerboard.

You can now do things to the baseball as you see fit, or you can copy and paste stuff from other images into this or whatever until you have the image that you want. After that, I usually do 'Layer -> Flatten Image' for good measure and then File -> Save As... and select Compuserve GIF as the format. You now have a transparent image.

Good luck! (Photoshop can be really really powerful, which means there is a lot of stuff you will never understand in that application so do not feel bad about asking.)

caribiner23

I'd also suggest a really good Photoshop book--- that's the best way for me to learn, anyway.

Good luck!

dannycufc

That's all fantastic, but I think we have our wires slightly crossed! Sorry to be a bit of a pain. What I want is to make my WHOLE image transparent, so it can be the background of my webpages. I design webpages but only usually get involved with the html, but I've been asked to use some images I've been given as the background and been given Photoshop to do it with. I can't put anything on top of them how they are at the moment, I just need to make the whole thing transparent. Really sorry to be a pain! Any help would really be appreciated. Thank you!

caribiner23

If by "transparent" you mean "light enough to be a background so that the other things on the page aren't overpowered by it," all you have to do is open the picture in Photoshop and adjust the brightness/contrast to make the image fade to the level you want.

Is the background picture of microphones on this page something like the effect you're going for?

dannycufc

Bloody hell didn't realise it would be so simple! Feel like an idiot now. Brilliant, cheers...