User Guide

Corel Painter 409
Creating GIF Files
Creating Transparent GIFs
The ability to define transparent areas
in a GIF file is used everywhere on the
Web today. If designed correctly, GIFs
with transparent areas are very
effective when displayed over
background colors or tiles.
A transparent GIF (the airplane) is displayed
over a blue background image.
With the increasing use of Cascading
Style Sheets (CSS), Dynamic HTML
(DHTML), and layers, there are even
more possibilities for using
transparency to your advantage.
In Corel Painter, the method of
defining transparency during GIF
export is to define the transparent
areas based on the current selection.
When your image contains layers, you
will often want the edges of the
floating elements to define the
transparent areas. For more
information about layers, refer to
“Using Layers and Layer Masks” on
page 229.
When saving to the GIF file format,
you can reduce the number of colors,
which translates into smaller files. For
more information about reducing the
number of colors, refer to “Reducing
the Number of Colors” on page 410.
For information about other options
available for saving GIF files, refer to
“Saving GIF Files” on page 48.
To create a transparent GIF from a
layer or group of layers:
1 To output transparency in a GIF,
you need an active selection. Select
a layer or group of layers.
2 On the Layers palette, click the
palette menu arrow and choose
Drop and Select.
The layers are merged with the
canvas and a selection containing
the contents of the dropped layers
is made.
3 Choose File menu > Save As.
4 In the Save dialog box, choose the
GIF file format, specify a location
and filename, and click Save.
5 In the Save As GIF Options dialog
box, enable the Output
Transparency check box to make
the selected area the only part of
the canvas displayed on your Web
page.
6 Enable one of the following
options:
• Background is WWW Gray
sets the transparent color to
75% gray (the default back-
ground color of the Netscape
Navigator browser).
• Background is BG Color sets
the transparent color to the sec-
ondary color on the Colors pal-
ette. Note that this setting does
not refer to the HTML page’s
background color.
7 In the Preview window, verify that
the selected area is correctly