modifying a bitmap

[Blelisa]

Hi,
I have a premade image in bitmap form, what I want to do is take the image and remove the background of it and only let the true picture show. I have fireworks that I am pretty efficient on and photoshop that is brand new to me. Could anyone help me? I can sticky mail the image if you would like

[trillianjedi]

Is the background a block colour (like white or black) or more complex?

TJ

[Blelisa]

It is white

[trillianjedi]

Open in Photoshop. Set the image "mode" to RGB (image menu).

Select the "magic wand" tool.

You'll see some settings in the toolbar under the menu's - tick the "contigious" box. Set "Tolerance" to 1 (you'll be tweaking it from here later).

Click on any of the white space on the image. The wand will try and select all of the contigious white background space.

First time around it probably won't do a great job. Increase tolerance by 25 and try again.

If it selects some of the image you want, reduce tolerance - not enough of the white - increase tolerance.

Trial and error.

When you've got all of the white selected hit the delete button. If you don't get a transparent background (not in front of Photoshop - can't remember what it does for bitmaps) then goto the "Select" menu and choose "invert selection". Then you have the image selected - copy, and paste into a new blank document with a transparent background.

Save for web - select .gif and tick "preserve transparency" box.

Let me know if you have any problems.

TJ

[trillianjedi]

Couple of other tips while I think about it:-

1. Holding down shift when clicking on an area with the magic wand +adds+ then area to the selection. Useful if you have one little bit left that's not being selected.

2. If the area contains lots of shades of white, the tolerence setting may not be accurate enough. A useful trick here is to open up the levels dialogue (under image menu, then adjust) and play with the brightness and contrast settings so you still have a good image, but the white becomes more consistent and contigious.

3. If you just want to change the white to match the background colour of your page, there's an easier way:-

Get the hex value of your background colour from the webpage. Open your image, create a new layer. Select the whole of the new layer (CTRL-A) and fill that layer with your site background colour. Move your original layer up to be the uppermost layer. On the graphic image layer, select layer properties from the menu that appears when you click the little right arrow symbol on the layers pallette. Choose "multiply" as the "blending option".

This "multiplies" the original colours with the background colour. All the white will be replaced with your page colour.

TJ