68
votes
Accepted
In Inkscape, how do I add a white background?
You are correct--that "checked background" is how many programs indicate transparent areas. SVG files have a transparent background. Changing the background color is not part of the SVG standard, so ...
- 6,932
55
votes
Accepted
Save a JPG without a background
You can't save transparency to a .jpg. The file format simply doesn't support it. Anything that is transparent will become white when saved to a .jpeg.
Try .png or .gif, those file formats do accept ...
- 25.1k
49
votes
Accepted
Why does a brush with 50% opacity and 100% flow take 8 individual strokes to reach 100% opacity?
Basically it blocks 50% of what is left behind, as opposed to being a pure 50% opacity in a additive way. Therefore working in an inverse exponential way towards 99.999...% opacity.
So laid on top of ...
- 4,704
45
votes
JPEG with transparent background
JPG does not allow transparent backgrounds.
The only thing you can do is have a flat color background that would blend into your website: eg. if your website background is white, then have JPGs ...
- 29.1k
26
votes
Accepted
Transparent artboard backgrounds in Photoshop
As of Photoshop CC 2015.5 you can now have artboards with transparent backgrounds.
Either create a new Artboard and select Transparent under the Background Contents menu or, if you have an existing ...
- 10.9k
19
votes
Why does a brush with 50% opacity and 100% flow take 8 individual strokes to reach 100% opacity?
Each stroke is moving 50% from the current color towards the brush color. The formula would be 100% * (1 - (brush opacity ^ number of strokes)). So going from white to black, you will have:
50% gray
...
- 358
18
votes
Accepted
Removing all partial transparency in GIMP
If you want to remove the transparency of the partially transparent pixels, use Layer>Transparency>Threshold alpha. Depending on the threshold this will either make the edge pixels totally transparent ...
- 15.9k
17
votes
Make a selection of image transparent in GIMP
Here is another method to make a selection semi-transparent.
Choose Layer > Transparency > Add Alpha Channel if not yet done.
Select your area.
Choose Select > Float (ShiftCtrlL) for creating a ...
- 12.4k
17
votes
JPEG with transparent background
JPEG doesn't support transparency at all.
Most compatible option is to use PNG, but results in large files for photographs because it is lossless compression.
Another option is to use the new WebP ...
- 271
16
votes
Inkscape for cartography: fill the background of a text
I had the same issue that Tom brought up in the comments under Billy Kerr's answer, which led me to find a different solution...
I found that using the Fill Background filter worked much better to add ...
- 161
16
votes
JPEG with transparent background
While the JPEG format can't handle transparency itself, it is entirely possible to have transparency using JPEGs with modern browsers. It is, however, complicated. It involves using SVG to create a ...
- 277
15
votes
Accepted
GIMP will only fill with black
Likely the PNG file is in Indexed Color Mode. Check in Menu: Image > Mode whether it is set to Indexed.... Change it to RGB and you can use any color you'd like.
- 3,024
15
votes
Accepted
Inkscape for cartography: fill the background of a text
Since there is no background attribute in a text object in SVG, you'd need to use another method, such as drawing a filled rectangle under the text, however as you say that's inconvenient as you'd ...
- 82.2k
14
votes
PNGs made in GIMP not coming out transparent
I’ve worked out why this might happen. If the Image Mode is set to Indexed Color, then the export doesn’t seem to accept the added alpha channel. So:
Image → Mode → RGB
File → Export As → imagename....
- 243
14
votes
Accepted
Set a stroke to knockout a fill behind it with live text in Illustrator
This is possible to do. You just need to know a very rarely used feature*.
First turn on transparency grid, so that you can observe the effect. Choose: View → Show Transparency Grid or hit Shift ...
- 57.5k
13
votes
Accepted
Make a selection of image transparent in GIMP
Select a rectangular region of the image with the Rectangle Select Tool.
Click the Eraser Tool. It looks like a pink eraser.
In the Tool Options pane, change the Opacity to 50%.
In the Tool Options ...
- 798
13
votes
Accepted
How to create a gradient opacity mask in Illustrator
Duplicate the object that you wish to create a reflection of and flip it vertically (Object > Transform > Reflect, making sure you choose Horizontally)
Duplicate the "reflection" group that you just ...
- 6,654
13
votes
Illustrator: white space around logo when exporting as JPG
In the Export dialog box, tick the 'Use Artboards' option. This saves the image including the containing artboard, what you're seeing as the white frame behind your logo.
If you need to re-adjust the ...
- 29.1k
12
votes
Accepted
Transparent path/stroke fill in Illustrator
There is a little known feature, in Illustrator, that allows you to do this non-destructively. That is without expanding and using pathfinder. This can bring some future flexibility to your designs. ...
- 57.5k
12
votes
Accepted
Adding transparency to ink drawing
To remove shadows and grain from the background we can chose a threshold for values of transparency and of opacity when using the "Color to Alpha" tool in Gimp 2.10:
Simply drag the sliders until you ...
- 12.4k
11
votes
JPEG with transparent background
JPEG 2000 (also known as JP2) is an improved version of the original JPEG format (from 1992) that also has full support for transparency, but it has abysmal browser support (only Safari supports it).
...
10
votes
Accepted
How to change all pixels in Gimp that are not one of two colors to white?
Are you sure you need the GIF format? PNG would allow smooth edges with transparency.
To edit the output colors you should first set your color mode to Indexed (Image > Mode > Indexed). For the ...
- 3,024
10
votes
Is it possible to subtract one layer from another in photoshop?
You can easily achieve this by using a mask on the second layer that is the same shape as the first layer like so:
Ctrl + Click on the first layer to select it's contents
Click on the second layer ...
- 4,945
10
votes
Adding transparency to ink drawing
You can clean the picture first, for instance using Levels:
the big peak on the right is the original background. This shows that the background is not pure white. If you use C2A without ...
- 15.9k
10
votes
Remove outer white space around logo
Photoshop is most likely not the correct tool to use or the tool you want for a "logo". It would be much better to use Illustrator or some other vector editing tool.
In any event, assuming ...
- 207k
9
votes
How to determine the color and opacity using the color picker tool?
Posting my 'findings' if someone else googles their way here.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/2175811
In Photoshop's Info panel, you can choose 'Opacity' as a readout mode,
though it will show up as ...
- 191
9
votes
Remove transparency from semitransparent pixel
Any level's transparency can be edited by transforming the layer transparency into a layer mask:
Layer > Layer Mask > From Transparency
So if we use image from @joojaa's answer:
This is what we get:...
- 226
9
votes
Accepted
What is the shortcut key for object opacity in Illustrator?
Go to Edit>>Keyboard shortcuts and assign your own shortcuts.
Now you can just type the number to the corresponding opacity as we do in Photoshop.
Here's my example in the image below.
- 2,465
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible