Transparency
If you're not sure what people mean when they tell you to make the background of an image transparent, or you just haven't yet figured out how, this tutorial is for you. For the purposes of this tutorial we'll be working with Animation Gallery. If you don't have it, You can get it from Corel by clicking here.
Step 1 - Choosing Your ImageBefore we get started, find the image that you want to work with. For this tutorial, I'll be working with the image below. You can see that right now, this adorable baby aisha is on a flat white background. In a few minutes, she'll be on a see through, or a transparent background.
When you've chosen your image, have it open in animation gallery and ready to work with.
Step 2 - Filling The BackgroundThe first thing you want to do is fill the background with a color NOT found in the image. I usually pick the gaudiest, brightest color I can choose, one that will contrast heavily from the picture. This will come in handy if we need to 'clean up' the image after we fill the background. You can see below that I've filled mine with a bright, annoying green.
Now, while that image may look clean (look at the lines of the image itself), it is NOT. You need to enlarge an image to make sure the lines are tidied up. Let's enlarge this aisha a few times with the 'zoom' tool.
See the white, sketchy pixels OUTSIDE the lines of the image itself? If we want the image to have clean lines on a transparent background, then we need to clean this up first. If your image doesn't have sketchy lines, you can skip to Step 4. Otherwise, move on to the next step.
Step 3 - Cleaning UpZoom in on your image until the pixels are visible enough that you'll be able to paint, pixel by pixel, around the image without fear of painting the image lines themselves. Using your paintbrush tool, paint the white, out of place pixels on the outside of the image the same color that you flood filled the background of your image with. Sometimes you're going to have to use your best judgement here. If there's a blank spot after you paint a bad pixel that you think needs to be filled in, use the outline color of the image and fill it in. Go with your instinct on what's going to make the image look as good as possible when it's done.
After you're done, the image should look much neater. See the difference with mine?
Step 4 - Replacing The Background ColorNow we can move on to actually removing the background. If you're wondering why we couldn't simply remove the white background that we started with, the reason is simple. White is a common color, found in almost every picture .. and especially in this aisha. When we tell animation gallery to replace the white with transparency, it would have removed ALL of the white. That's why we chose a color that wasn't found in the picture.
Now, on the topbar, click "animation", then click "replace color". You're going to get a popup screen that looks like this:
For the settings, set the "old color" to the color of your image background by simply clicking on the background in your image. You'll see that the "old color" in my settings is set to the background color behind the aisha. For the setting "replace with", make sure "transparent opacity" is checked. Then click "okay".
Step 5 - SavingIf you've done everything right, this is what you should have in front of you now:
The grey and white tiled squares indicate a transparent, or see through, background. Now you can save your image as a GIF, or move on to whatever you planned to do next with this image.
