AboutNeal Ziring Expertise Experienced user of versions 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and X3 mostly for
web page graphics, some photo retouching, some technical document
illustration. Right now I only have versions 12 and X3 available to me,
so I'll be best at answering questions about those.
Question I want to make a web graphic with a transparent background. What I would like to be able to do is add vignette and have it be transparent so it fades into the background on the website.
I have tried selecting one color for transparency, saving it as a PNG file...but it always ends up white when I post it to the web.
Corel help told me to change the transparent background options. I have tried changing the transparency option to transparent background under image properties but the box is always grayed out and I can't select it.
I have even tried starting afresh and importing the image...no.
I have no idea what I am doing wrong?!?
Answer Melissa,
>
> I want to make a web graphic with a transparent background.
> What I would like to be able to do is add vignette and have
> it be transparent so it fades into the background on the
> website.
This is possible in Corel PhotoPaint, but it isn't trivial to
do it right. Just selecting a single color for transparency
on saving the file won't give you a smooth fade. You have to
create a smoothly shaded alpha channel. (Note: PNG is the only
format supported by web browsers that can do this. However, it
doesn't work perfectly in versions of MSIE prior to 6.0.)
I don't think it is possible to do sophisticated
graded transparency in PhotoHouse. Fortunately, you
can obtain the same basic effect as long as the web page
has a solid background color and you know what the page's
background color is.
For example, assume that the background color of the web page
is a pale blue (r:200,g:200,b:255). I think that you can set
the vignette background color to the same pale blue color,
and you'll get a nice fade into the page.
If you want a "double fade" where the vignette effect fades into
the picture on the inside and fades to the page around the outside,
that is possible also but takes more work. You'd want to follow
these steps:
1. Load the image into PhotoHouse. Call this image A.
2. Apply the inner vignette to A using a color that has good
contrast with the image and with the web page. Dark
gray is usually a safe choice.
3. Create a new image B that is larger than the original
image A by about 15-20% in all directions.
4. Copy image A.
5. Paste into image B. Be sure to center the pasted A
within B.
6. Flatten layers if necessary. (I'm not sure if
PhotoHouse requires this step, PhotoPaint does.)
7. Apply the outer vignette to B using the color of the web
page.
8. Save B under a new name.
It may be necessary to play around with step 3 in order to get the
sizes right.
Sorry I couldn't give you a more detailed answer. I don't have
PhotoHouse available to me.
