Transparent background with Photoshop 7

[GabrielNYC]

It's been a LONG time since I've any bit of graphic design etc. I've moved on to video game research/development.

A friend of mine asked me to help with a project of his. He wants the image below redone but with a transparent background that way his homepage's background color shows up.

I told him it would be easier to have it done with different colors but he's adamant about transparencies.

So my question is as follows:
How do i achieve this effect with Photoshop 7? It's been like 2 yrs since I used that program. In fact, Im surprised I still have it on this PC.

<No links to examples, please>

Any thoughts, suggestions, tips, flames?

Thanks very much...

Gabriel

[edited by: tedster at 7:35 pm (utc) on Jan. 7, 2006]

[tedster]

Hello GabrielNYC and welcome to the forums.

You can use either the gif format or the png format - either one supports transparency. It's been a while since I used version 7, so I'm not sure when Photoshop transitioned to their new more intuitive handling of transparency. All I think you need to do is this:

1. Create a new Photoshop document - you can choose to begin with a transparent background
2. Paste a copy of the image in as a new layer
3. Select the areas you want to be transparent - be sure to exclude the "anti-aliasing" pixels that are just slightly off color from the area you want to be a transparent background
4. Delete those selected pixels
5. Use "Save for the Web" (it launches ImageReady, a companion program)
6. Be sure to have "transparency" checked in ImageReady before you do the final save.

[edited by: tedster at 7:35 pm (utc) on Jan. 7, 2006]

[tedster]

I just realized one step that may be challenging for you, depending on what color the background is. The image you paste in should be created over that same color to begin with. If you are beginning with a different background color, you will need to adapt the starter image before you paste it in (step #2). Otherwise the anti-aliasing pixels will create visible jaggies.

This is usually easy to do by creating a background of the color you want, pasting in the starter image, and then using blending modes. You can just flatten this image when you get the look you want and now you're ready for the stepa I outlined above.

If the image is going to appear against several different backgrounds, then using png with an alpha transparency channel is the only way I know of that will allow the same image to be used in different places.

[GabrielNYC]

Guys, thanks for the help. It really helped alot!