Creating transparent jpgs

anyone know a free program?

[dreamcatcher]

Hi Guys,

I need to create a few simple transparent jpgs for my site. I don`t particularly want to buy a graphics package just for a few images, so would any of you know of a free program that would let me do this?

Doesn`t have to be anything fancy. I have found some free programs, but as I don`t have a graphics background I don`t know which ones to try.

Thanks.

[PatrickDeese]

As far as i know, there is no such thing as a transparent JPG.

Transparency can only be done with GIF and PNG format.

if you just need one, you could probably just "steal" one from a another site - just look for something called clear.gif (seems to be the "industry standard" name for transparent gifs).

also there is a free program called Gimp - www.gimp.org that can do most of the general things one might need to make images for the web.

[dreamcatcher]

Actually I`m pretty sure you can make a jpeg transparent using ImageMagick. Not sure.

What I want to do is create some simple logos for my scripts. I have a program that saves images as transparent PNG`s, but they dont work in IE unless I add some javascript and I dont want to go down that road. I believe there is a way with ImageMagick like I say, but I`m not sure and I don`t really understand it anyway.

I will try out the Gimp program which you recommend. Thanks for the help.

[nalin]

using imagemagicks "convert" tool you could change the pngs to jpeg or gif - but jpeg does not have an alpha layer and does not support transparency.

the man page for convert has more detail then you will ever need - there are also a handful of tutorials linked from imagemagick.org.

[dreamcatcher]

Thanks nalin.