Hi, I just wanted to know if anyone knows about, What is GIF transparency, and when should it be used? Your ideas on GIF transparency are most welcomed. Thanks in advance...
Basically it means that your picture does not have a background color, it is useful when you are integrating the gif into any web page without worrying about the background color of the gif.
it's a normal image but without background (transparent).. it reduce the size of the pic byte but the quality of the pic also reduce.
owh.. that's what i read and face it.. maybe because i use PC because windows reserve some color.. i don't know about mac.
Most GIF's are saved with a transparent background in Photoshop. This is fine for web pages on the internet, but not for print production as tranparent backgrounds cause problems with RIPs on output devices.
GIF's are an old format, made for the web by CompuServe (remember way back when?). It uses a limited palette of only 256 colours to create your image, so unless it's alogo, you're likely going to suffer quality loss in colour depth. GIF's can use a colour that is rendered as transparent in browsers, but the issue with this is it's either 100 opaque, or 100% clear. Now, unless your design is made up of entirely straight vertical or horizontal lines, the edges will be jagged. Text will be jagged, circles, angled lines or any other form will all be very very jagged. PNG's are a format created by Chris Lilley, of the W3C, the same people that made HTML, CSS and Javascript, as an ideal image for the web. PNG's are bigger in size than GIF's, but they are true colour and don't limit your colour depth. PNG's also have what is called 'Variable Transparency', meaning any pixel can exist in any colour, at one of 255 states of transparency between 100% opaque and 100% transparent. PNG's are more useful for photos, text, and any image with curves or angled lines. PNG's can be written in photoshop as well as almost every other popular image editing software, and if you're looking for a simple and powerful image editor that saves PNG's I highly recommend the open-source program GIMP gimp.org If you're looking for a vector program that exports transparent PNG's I highly recommend the open-source program Inkscape inkscape.org Wikipedia has a lot more information about the GIF and PNG filetypes, best of luck!
I'm using gif's on "none-complex" transparent images.. It get's some grainy borders when it's more complex... To complex transparent images, I use PNG's... Works very well, and have per-pixel transparency
Hi, WOW ! All info's are good .... I too have learnt a lot and also in depth about GIF's : The below is just the basic information i liked to share : GIF transparency is "binary". That basically means that a pixel in a GIF graphic is either on (colored), or off (transparent). This is different from the multiple levels of transparency in graphics programs such as Photoshop, or even the 254 levels of transparency possible with PNG files.What this means is that when you have a transparent GIF, one of the critical things to watch out for are the edges. A well prepared transparent GIF blends in as seamlessly as possible with the background color or picture. Like to know if anything else is missing in the above discussions about GIF Transparency .