transparency help

[TeriBeary]

I'm hopeless when it comes to Photoshop, which is why I use SBC+ for scrapbooking I have a GIF with a white background. Is there an easy way to change the background to transparent? I'm sure there is and i'm just missing it. It's just a simple graphic, black characters but I'd like a transparent background. Thanks - you guys are always so helpful.

[Ginger_79]

Uhm, so to clarify, do you want to know how to do it in Photoshop or in your program?

[TeriBeary]

Photoshop, but SBC would be amazing. I am sure I can't do it there though so I have to suffer through PS

[Ginger_79]

Right, so the good news is, there is a rather quick way. The bad news is, it only works for objects with VERY well defined edges. You can delete the background manually. Which means you have to select the background area first. If you have something like a cartoon then the magic wand tool might work. It's in your tool palette and looks...well...like a magic wand. It automatically selects areas with pixels of the same colour. So click on your background and it should select it. Then you can simply delete it.

If you don't have a very sharp edge, then you will notice the auto selection is off. It often leaves a few white pixels at the edges. You'll have to manually delete those. Problem is, the best way is using masks and I'm pretty sure that will be a bit challenging, when you rarely work with that program. So maybe you just wanna zoom in a lot, use a very small eraser brush and go with that.

Another thing that can help, if it's ok to loose a tiny bit of your object edges, is to first use the magic wand on the background and then expand the selection. Click on the bg with the wand. With the selection still active ("marching ants") go to the menu "selection > change selection". Or similiar, sorry haven't used the English version in a while. NOT transform selection though. It should be the 10th option from the top. When you hold the cursor over it, a menu opens and there should be something like increase/expand. Click that. It open a pop-up box in which you can define how much you want your selection to be expanded in pixels. Type in a few pixels and hit ok. Then delete.

It really depends on the object, how well this works. When you save the new file, choose png format, NOT jpg. That would automatically add a white background again.

[TeriBeary]

That is awesome! I've done this and all the white is gone but now the background is grey and I can't figure out how to change it to clear. Yup, I'm hopeless - thank you so much for all your help!

ETA: I just pasted it into a new document and it's perfect! Thank you.