When you have a presence online, you inevitably will run into the need for graphics. Depending what you do, graphics with transparent backgrounds are extremely versatile.
To someone new to all this, it’s not always clear how to do that.
First, you should know that transparent images can only be in GIF or PNG format. While the actual steps may be different, the process is more or less similar between different tools. You can either:
- Remove the background color or
- Tell the graphics software you are using to ignore the background color. You want to be careful when using this option though. If certain parts of the graphic has the same color as the background you want to be transparent, it will remove those also.
Here’s a quick video we created to help you make images with transparent backgrounds using a free PhotoShop-like tool called Pixlr.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLD0N-Qofqo[/youtube]
