Transparent gif - what am I doing wrong?

Zascar

Ok this is driving me nuts...

I need to make a .gif image with a transparent background. For some reason I can't do it properly. Tried in PSP but I just got a white box as a background. Tried in Fireworks and it worked, but the image is a bit grotty.

This is the page, you'll see the image at the top right - any ideas why it is jagged and not smooth?

If anyone can do this properly, and wants to help me out my making a .gif with "Irish DJ Forum" in white/light gray - 225x42 - that would be great.
Cheers

Myxomatosis

Give this a lash and see if it does the job.

The font and size probably don't match but if it suits just give me correct attributes and I'll make a proper one.

What tool did you use to create your gif?

I just made that one with photoshop and made sure the text was anti-aliased.

Zascar

Thanks. Ok I just uploaded it, take a look.

Better but still not great.

Maybe I should just use a .png like on this site - but then I need to figure out where in the theme code it links to the image to change it...

Axwell

Try this,pm me if you want it changed.

Myxomatosis

Ah yes of course sorry,

GIFs are limited to 8bit so when the nice anti-aliased text is save in the GIF format, some of the more subtle colours are discarded and you get the jaggedy edges.

PNG can use 24bit and even 32bit, allowing more colours. So you'll have to find in the code where the image is linked to and change it to title.png.

Zascar

I've searched and cannot find where in the code the .png is. (EDIT: think I found it...)

Is it possible to do this with a gif? I managed it on the other site but I cannot remember how!

Zascar

Wohoo! Working now.... Thanks everyone for the help!

Axwell

Got your pm..try the attached

Myxomatosis

When I put my mouse over "Irish DJ Forum" it disappears. Firefox 3

Zascar

saw that myself.... weird!

Will check it out later

Myxomatosis

It's cos there's 2 places in the code where the image is linked to.

I'm assuming your using a .png and you've linked to that to display the image. There's a CSS mouse over event firing off when a user hovers the mouse over the image, and this is being linked to the title.gif, which I assume you've now removed. So you'll have to find that and change it to .png.

I've actually figured out how to make the text smoother in a GIF by playing around with the allowed colour pallet so if you cannot find the code to change it to the png, you can always revert back to using GIFs, but this time they will be smooth.

Zascar

Thanks Myxomatosis, I fixed the style.css with the other places and its working well now.

Cheers for your help!