setting transparent backgrounds

[RezRunner]

Greetings All.

I'm trying to create a powerpoint presentation with pictures that are oval with a colored background, unfortunately the pic's show up as oval on a rectangular background, I want to eliminate everything but the oval. I'm using corel photopaint7, can anyone here help me or do you know of another program preferrably open source that I can use to do this with?

 

[attrofy]

Create an oval mask, center it where you want it, then Object > Create > Object: Copy Selection. This will give you just an oval image of the picture. This can have some issues if you want a transparent background, but sometimes, the easiest is to set it on the color of whatever the Power POint presentation background will be.

If you just create the mask, then Save As *.GIF or *.PNG you can save the mask data in your image. Version 7 you may have to convert the image to 8 Bit palleted before saving as *.GIF. I believe it is under the Image menu. ANyway, one of the dialgoue boxes will ask you about transparency. You can either choose a color, or select the masked area.

Sorry I can't provide specifics, all of this is going from memory, and there may be a step or two missing, but should get you close.