Transparent Sigs? Need some PS help

[tony3]

Hey, I pretty much want my sig with a transparent backround, can anyone teach me how to do this or give me a link to a tutorial that would show me how. Talk to me on aim, tonyyyyyyyyyy8

[ScatterPlot]

You could just use the background color for the site, that way it'd look transparent. Do a print-screen and use whatever the PS equivalent is to Paint's eyedropper to match the color. I think one time I actually found out what it was, I'll have to see if I can find where I put it.

[ScatterPlot]

Found it. I think that the color, at least for HTML, is "F5F5F5". Here's some text written in it (highlight to read):
<font color="F5F5F5">This is a test. You could make the background of your sig this color to make it look transparent. Sorry if you need it to be actually clear, I don't have PS and can't help ya much there.</font>

[ScatterPlot]

Crap, the thing doesn't work. The colors alternate between 2, so you can't make it work this way. Sorry, but good luck anyways.

[Bad_Dog]

yah but unfortunatly the forum uses two different colors on each thread. Every other post is either the light of dark grey.... different but barely noticible. Now if you were to make a sig with one on the colores, and you post had the other background, it would definatly be noticible... the best way to do it is to have a transparent background and lets say your sig isnt square or rectangular... just go to "save for web" instead of "save as" and it'll automatically make the shape the shape of whatever it is...

[Fixion]

Originally posted by bertmcmahan
You could just use the background color for the site, that way it'd look transparent. Do a print-screen and use whatever the PS equivalent is to Paint's eyedropper to match the color. I think one time I actually found out what it was, I'll have to see if I can find where I put it.

Too bad the background color alternates. Use photoshop.

[TraXeR]

Here's a Tutorial.

[ScatterPlot]

Yeah, I corrected myself. Look above.

[Cryer]

The Hex value of the closest color you can get to both shades of grey is actually "ededed".

Synreal made a tutorial that I edited and posted in the photoshop thread here. I'll get a link.

[Cryer]

I always use PNG 128 dithered and optimize it to under 20k (see my last post... up)

from a post by syn real:

Originally posted by synreal
i use photoshop 7 for 90+% of my design work.

getting nice smooth edges is actually quite easy.

sig pics on AO can fall on one of two different colored backgrounds (posts in threads alternate between two shades of grey backers). when i create images, i use a background color that is in between the two shades (#EDEDED) as a base for my work.

after i finish a design and am ready to export it as a transparent gif, i flatten the image onto the light grey background



dup the layer, hide the background layer and use the magic wand to grab everything that is #EDEDED (0 tolerance, no anti-aliasing) and delete it.





<font size="1">this one is just to better show the deleted area-do not add the blue layer</font>

this leaves a very thin border, usually no more than a pixel or two, around my image that smooths the transition from my art to the background color.

Use either "Save for Web" or "GIF89a Export" to save/export your gif (make sure that you turn transparency on )

End result:


hope that made sense

Note-I replaced his old links with link to screenshots I took... If you dont see them hit "refresh"

[tony3]

thanks guys, I'm going to work on it later tonight, and hopefully make a new sig all together, mine is pretty crappy.