1) Open the image
2) On the "Layers" dialog, create a new transparent layer
3) Click on the "Background" layer so the original image is selected
4) Use the "Select By Color" tool to select the white (Right click on the image, click on "Select" then on "By color" and choose the white background with the mouse pointer)
5) Right click on the image and click "Select" then "Grow" and grow the selection by 1 pixel
6) Invert the selection by right-clicking on the image and "Select" then "Invert"
7) Then copy the selection by right clicking on the image then "Edit" then "Copy"
8) On the layers dialog, select the transparent layer so it is the currrent/active layer
9) Right click on the image and click "Edit" then "Paste"
10) Click the "Anchor" button on the layers dialog to anchor the image you just pasted
11) Click the "eye" icon to the left of the original image layer with the "Background" name and the white background should disappear
This process can be simplified using layer masks:
1) Open the image
2) On the Layers dialog, right click on the "Background" layer and click "Add Alpha Channel"
3) Right click on the image and click "Select" then "By color"
4) Right click on the image and click "Select" then "Grow" and grow the selection by 1 pixel
5) Choose the white background with the mouse pointer
6) On the Layers dialog, right-click on the Background layer and click "Add Layer Mask" Select the White (Full Opacity) mask option
7) Right click on the image and click "Edit" "Fill with FG color" and the white background should disappear
8) On the Layers dialog, right click on the Background layer and click "Apply Layer Mask"
9) At this point, you must decide if you want to save as GIF or PNG since JPEG does not support transparency and save the image. Be sure to use Save As to save the image so you won't clobber the orignal.
I'm sure others can fine tune this procedure as well but I just did it and the image does have a transparent background.
Hope this helps! :)
Peace....
Tom
dreadnought wrote:
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the reply! I've been trying all the suggestions I've been
getting through this mailing list, and still have not been able to get the
background of my test image transparent. Here's the link again for the
image I'm working on:
http://www.pelican.com/imatges/3cases_1620.jpg
I went through all the Gimp options after right-clicking on the image, and do not see any "add alpha channel" .. I've been browsing FAQ's on the net regarding the Gimp, and have seen that images that are not in RGB can be problematic. Just for kicks, I went and tried to change mode to "RGB", but "RGB" is greyed out for this image.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Stavropoulos [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2004 9:16 PM
To: dreadnought
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Gimp-user] Making an image with a white background
transparent?
On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, dreadnought wrote:
I've been using the technique mentioned in the email below to try to get images with white backgrounds transparent .. I've had some good luck, but also some bad. Today I used the process on two .jpg's and the *entire* images ended up transparent. In one of the images, the foreground color is actually black. I've got the color picker on white and then do a color to alpha on white. The entire image (including the black stuff in the middle) gets the alternating boxesindicative of transparency.
This behaviour is the expected. Color to alpha removes the selected color from all the colors in the image in such a way that when you put the image above a background of that color you will get your original image. To do what you want, and that is to just erase a specific color, you should: 1) add an alpha channel to your layer if it hasn't got any yet (right click on the layer and "add alpha channel") 2) Select -> Select by Color 3) Edit -> Clear
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