Creating a quality transparency in PS 5.5

[david7777777777]

Ok, I've been reading all of these articles in this forum related to the creation of a transparency and it appears that I've tried all of the tricks that are being pointed out here, like:

1. File - Export to GIF89
2. Use no matte
3. Image - Mode - Indexed color
4. Make a background color and select that color as the transparent color

I can still not get a decent looking GIF out of PS 5.5. Every time I make it Indexed Colors mode the image looks like it's in 16-color mode or something. The gradations and shadowed areas are horrible and the edges are a joke they are so jagged. What am I missing? Is it really this difficult to create an image with a transparency in PS 5.5? Any helpful hints or pointers to yet more helpful articles are greatly appreciated.

By the way, here's something I'm currently working on and I have a second question as well:

Here's the site and I'm practicing duplicating their logo as a way for me to enhance my PS skills:

http://www.bahiadelsolnv.com

And here's the image (jpeg version) I'm building:

http://davidaddis.com/bds

I think I've got it all down now except two things:

1. Getting it to look good as a transparency
2. How to get the "curved" lines through the blue circle part of the image. I've only been anle to get straight lines in the blue part of the version of the image I'm making. Thanks!

 

[jimoblak]

1. File - Export to GIF89???

Try File>Save For Web for more options...

 

[david7777777777]

I'm in there (Save for Web option) and I'm still unable to find the right combination of settings that allow me to make a nice looking image with transparency. Can someone out there please tell me how to make a professional image with transparency please? Should I be using a different application? Thanks.

 

[jimoblak]

GIF only gives you 256 colors so you may never see your 'professional image'. You may try PNG which supports transparency at millions of colors but it is not well supported in web browsers.

Your other option is to forget about transparency and just design your image with the page background. I am lost how you need transparency with your sample at

http://davidaddis.com/bds

If you are trying to set those images on the blue background of the original page, just make a blue background behind the images in PS and don't worry about transparency. The blue background of your images can mix seamlessly with the blue of the page.

 

[david7777777777]

That's pretty much the conclusion I've come to also. Thanks.

 

[leonec]

A .gif transparency is either black or white...so the pixel can be either on or off...this works well for logos and simple text but not for anything fancy. this format works in all browsers and is a very small file.

A .png transparency has a 8 bit gray scale. which makes a better transparency because there are 8 different levels of on or off. So the anit-alaising is mush better. The cons here are that older versions of IE do not support this file type and the file itself is alot bigger.