PSP : MAKING IMAGES TRANSPARENT (TUT 1)

Paint Shop Pro Image Tutorials | Submited Feb 29, 2008

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Tut No. 1 - using a black/white image

(always remember to take a copy of your original image and work on the copy).

1. Choose the MAGIC WAND tool.

2. Wand settings entirely up to you (and is usually trial and error), for this tutorial I will use these settings.


3. Click anywhere on the white background - this should now be completely selected and you should see moving lines surrounding the image. Now we need to invert the selection so that the butterfly is selected you do that by either using the keyboard Ctrl-Shift-I OR
.
Your image should now look like this. Example:

4. Take a copy - using the keyboard go - Ctrl-C OR

5. Paste as a new image - using the keyboard go - Ctrl-Shift-V OR ).

You should now have the butterfly on a transparent background.


Finally, to keep the clarity/quality of the image, save as a PNG.

6. File > Export > PNG Optimizer


7. A screen will open with the Colors tab showing. Make sure that 16.7 million colors is checked, if not do so now.


8. Now click on the Transparency tab and choose the settings as shown here and then click OK


You will then see a screen that looks like this


Choose where you want the image to be saved and give it a file name and make sure it is set on PNG for the file type and then hit save.

You now have a transparent image with no lowering in resolution and no white background.

NOTE: You can only save transparent images as a PNG file. You cannot save animated transparent images as a PNG, these must be saved with a GIF file extension.

Here is my final image.