Transparent gif problem

Gets all smudgy when I convert it from psd to gif

[LABachlr]

All I am trying to do is create a gif file in Photoshop 7 that simply has white text with a black drop shadow effect with a transparent background. The reason for the transparent background is that the webpage background has a gradient effect on it, and using the transparent background is the easiest way to have the background of the gif match the page's background exactly.

It looks great when I create it, but when I go to "Save for the web", and save it as a GIF, it gets all smudgy and looks really bad. You can barely see the words. I tried changing the "Settings" when I "saved for the web". I changed them to "GIF 128 Dithered". It made the text look a lot better, but there is still a white patch around each letter. I changed the matte setting from "white" to "none", but that made it look like it did orginally (really smudgy with the words practically unreadable).

I tried to do the same thing in Fireworks, but I got the same results.

Any thoughts?

[LABachlr]

I found this answer when doing a search, but it does not work with a background that has a gradient effect.

What you need to do is specify a matte color.

Your drop shadow and your anti-alias text contain partial transparency, GIF files don't support this (only one color can act as transparent). So Photoshop gives the image a matte color (default is white) to make these partial transparent areas opaque.

Save for the Web allows you to change the matte color to any color you want.

In the save for the web options, look for the box labled Matte (in-between Dither and Web Snap). Click inside the box and the color picker comes up, or click on the arrow and choose Other. Pick your background color (or the most predominant color in your background).

another person added to the above post

set transparent color
set matte color to same color
tah...dah! no more white BG

[korkus2000]

What I do is go in pixel by pixel and fix the problem areas. Just use the matte color and basically touch up.

[LABachlr]

Good advice. I actually just decided to have that part stand out on its own with a slightly different color than the backgroud. It works well that way.

[garann]

It isn't going to do you a lot of good with a drop shadow (have you considered PNG?), but in Save for Web, changing the Transparency Dither to Diffusion also cuts down on the matte quite a bit.