Add Transparent/Different Background To Logo

pr0gr4mm3r's picture

He has: 1,502 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

Hello, I am trying to take a logo that has a white background and make that background transparent so I can stick it on a gradient page. The problem is that I get the rough edges and for the life of me, I can't get it as crisp as it once was.

Graphic design is my weakest point, so any help would be appreciated. I use The Gimp by the way.

Thanks!

teammatt3's picture

He has: 2,102 posts

Joined: Sep 2003

If I'm understanding you correctly, I don't think there is any easy way around it. When I created a site with a rotating header image and a logo with some transparency, I ran into the same problem. What I ended up doing was creating a separate logo for each different header, and writing a simple php script to make sure they were correlating (I was in a time crunch). So logo 4 goes with header 4 (notice how the logo has part of the header image as the background). I think someone told me with gifs, transparency is either on or off, nothing in between. And I think that's what your problem is. So what I would do (not knowing anything better) would be to merge part of gradient onto the logo like what I did. I think that is why people are advocating png's.

Roo's picture

She has: 840 posts

Joined: Apr 1999

What image editing program are you using?

Depending on the logo and the gradient color, sometimes you can simply use multiply blend mode and the white will blend in and disappear. This will make the logo dark if the gradient is dark though and you may need to adjust curves to get the logo to 'pop' again.

Again...this depends on the logo and the gradient.

Roo

demonhale's picture

He has: 3,278 posts

Joined: May 2005

Yes, a fool-proof way is to have the bg together with the logo, you can cut it seamlessly so that it appears transparent-like. Either that or use PNG transparency. on Gif its a hit and miss thing, you need to count your colors for a better transparency...

pr0gr4mm3r's picture

He has: 1,502 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

Ya, the only way I found to get around this was to use PNG because it supports variable transparency. The only problem with that is the wonderful IE 6 doesn't support it unless I have a special JavaScript embedded which some people may block.

I guess the other option was to save the background as part of the image, but I was still in the process of moving stuff around, and I wanted the freedom of moving the logo and background w/o having to redo everything.

Roo's picture

She has: 840 posts

Joined: Apr 1999

Yes, wouldn't life be grand if 'Destroyer' supported png with alpha transparancy like every other browser does?

Does the new IE7 support it?

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