Irfanview or other graphics question

[rex72]

Okay, I have a smiley in a gif format. In Irfanview, it shows a black
background, but when I post it on a message board, it matches the white
background of the board. So far so good.

But for reasons that aren't important, I want to change this gif to a jpg.
When I did that in Irfanview, the background stayed black when I posted it
on a board.

What am I doing wrong?

Is there a program that will convert a gif to jpg and keep the background
characteristics the same?

Thanks.

 

[TheManifold]

..jpg, by it's very format nature, does not support transparency. .gif
does. There's your problem/solution in one.

 

[old jon]

In other words. with GIF you lift the pic off the paper, with jpg you lift
the pic and the paper. ok ?.

 

[Wald]

Okay, I have a smiley in a gif format. In Irfanview, it shows a black
background, but when I post it on a message board, it matches the
white background of the board. So far so good.

But for reasons that aren't important, I want to change this gif to a
jpg. When I did that in Irfanview, the background stayed black when I
posted it on a board.

What am I doing wrong?

As said, the cause is that the JPEG format does not support transparency.
If you want another format, try PNG, which does support transparency.

Regards
Wald

 

[rex72]

As said, the cause is that the JPEG format does not support
transparency. If you want another format, try PNG, which does support
transparency.

Okay, thanks to everyone. I get it now.

 

[Tom McDonald]

Okay, thanks to everyone. I get it now.

If I'm not mistaken, IrfanView allows you to change the background color
against which your transparent gifs and pngs are displayed (the "paper",
as old jon referred to it). The setting is found under Options,
Properties, Viewing, Main Window Color. White works better than black
for many transparencies. You should now be able to save your gif as a
jpg with white background.

 

[rex72]

If I'm not mistaken, IrfanView allows you to change the background color
against which your transparent gifs and pngs are displayed (the "paper",
as old jon referred to it). The setting is found under Options,
Properties, Viewing, Main Window Color. White works better than black
for many transparencies. You should now be able to save your gif as a
jpg with white background.

Unfortunately, it just changes the color of the display window. It doesn't
change the color of the image's actual background. :-(

I tried using a paint program on the jpg, but the boundry between the icon
and the background has shades of gray. IOW, I can't just select the
background and tell it to change from black to white.

 

[Tom McDonald]

Unfortunately, it just changes the color of the display window. It
doesn't change the color of the image's actual background. :-(

I tried using a paint program on the jpg, but the boundry between the
icon and the background has shades of gray. IOW, I can't just select
the background and tell it to change from black to white.

I have the feeling that I'm missing something. The original image is a
gif, and we're assuming that it has a transparent background. So there's
no such thing as "the image's actual background" - like a chameleon, it
takes on the color of whatever background it's displayed over. Now the
goal is to save it as a jpg with white background, am I correct? Perhaps
you could post the image to alt.binaries.freeware so that I could take a
look at it? As for the paint program, usually there's a way to increase
the "tolerance level" of the selection tool - increasing the tolerance will
help you to get the gray pixels on the boundary.

 

[rex72]

I have the feeling that I'm missing something. The original image is
a gif, and we're assuming that it has a transparent background. So
there's no such thing as "the image's actual background" - like a
chameleon, it takes on the color of whatever background it's displayed
over.

I guess so...I won't pretend to understand. All I know is that the
original gif displays in Irfanview with a black background, even though I
changed the settings to make the background white. Yet when posted on a
message board, it takes on the white background.

Now the goal is to save it as a jpg with white background, am I
correct?
Correct.

ld take a look at it? As for the paint program, usually
there's a way to increase the "tolerance level" of the selection tool
- increasing the tolerance will help you to get the gray pixels on the
boundary.

Unfortunately, while I do have access to alt.binaries.freeware via
BigGulp, I don't have posting privledges. Or at least that's what it's
telling me.

Which paint program do you suggest, and what would be a good starting
tolerance level?

 

[Tom McDonald]

Unfortunately, while I do have access to alt.binaries.freeware via
BigGulp, I don't have posting privledges. Or at least that's what
it's telling me.

Which paint program do you suggest, and what would be a good starting
tolerance level?

PhotoFiltre
http://www.photofiltre.com/
MagicWandTool
Set Tolerance at 40 and see if that does the job for you, if not, raise
it or lower it as needed.

But I'd still like to get my hands on the original. Have you ever used
yousendit?
http://www.yousendit.com/
Enter acfreeware at mailinator dot com
as the address.

 

[kenny]

Gif and PNG support transparency. PNG is like jpg in quality but also has an
alpha channel (transparecy).

 

[rex72]

Thanks for the PhotoFiltre rec.

But I'd still like to get my hands on the original. Have you ever used
yousendit?
http://www.yousendit.com/

Cool. It should be in the mail. Yeah, I had heard of yousendit, but never
used it before. If you have luck with the jpg, you can post it on
alt.binaries.freeware. I can receive, just not post.

 

[Tom McDonald]

Thanks for the PhotoFiltre rec.


Cool. It should be in the mail. Yeah, I had heard of yousendit, but
never used it before. If you have luck with the jpg, you can post it
on alt.binaries.freeware. I can receive, just not post.

No, it wasn't there. Meanwhile, someone suggested that you check your
IrfanView settings. In addition to the Viewing Tab (Main Window set to
White, Background Color set to Black), check the JPG/PCD/GIF tab to be
sure that "Show transparency in non-animated gifs" is checked.

If this fails, all I can think of is to try PicViewer Lite
http://www.anixsoft.com/files/PicView.zip
which may display the gif on a white background. I just tested the
program, and unfortunately, although it allows exporting as jpg (File,
Convert), it renders the transparent background as grey. Which is the
default behavior of most graphics programs.

If you can get a program to display the gif on a white background, you
could hit PrntScrn on your keyboard to take a picture of it, then paste
into IrfanView or PhotoFiltre and crop and save as jpg.

For this purpose, have you tried emailing the gif to yourself? When you
receive it, Outlook Express should display the picture on a white
background.

Would you feel comfortable posting a link to the message board where the
picture displayed properly on white?

 

[rex72]

No, it wasn't there.

Hmmm...not sure why you didn't get it.

Meanwhile, someone suggested that you check your
IrfanView settings. In addition to the Viewing Tab (Main Window set to
White, Background Color set to Black), check the JPG/PCD/GIF tab to be
sure that "Show transparency in non-animated gifs" is checked.

Aha! It was the Show transparency option that did the trick. Irfanview
never fails to have some trick hidden up it's sleeve. ;-)

If you can get a program to display the gif on a white background, you
could hit PrntScrn on your keyboard to take a picture of it, then paste
into IrfanView or PhotoFiltre and crop and save as jpg.

Worked like a charm...many thanks!

 

[Tom McDonald]

Hmmm...not sure why you didn't get it.


Aha! It was the Show transparency option that did the trick. Irfanview
never fails to have some trick hidden up it's sleeve. ;-)


Worked like a charm...many thanks!

Glad it worked. IrfanView is a great program, but so many options can be
confusing.

 

[David]

Gif and PNG support transparency. PNG is like jpg in quality but also has an
alpha channel (transparecy).

Not true. PNG is like GIF in that it is a lossless format but with
more colours available. JPEG is lossy.

 

[Libor Striz]

Okay, I have a smiley in a gif format. In Irfanview, it shows a black
background, but when I post it on a message board, it matches the white
background of the board. So far so good.

But for reasons that aren't important, I want to change this gif to a jpg.
When I did that in Irfanview, the background stayed black when I posted it
on a board.

What am I doing wrong?

Is there a program that will convert a gif to jpg and keep the background
characteristics the same?

Thanks.

It is not question of conversion, but of a transparency flag of black
color in GIF. Use PNG instead of GIF, if truecolor is a reason.
--
"Libor the Wanderer" <[email protected]>

Any supposed offense is because of my bad english a/o formulation
and was not intended in any way.
ForPrivateResponseRemoveDelAndThisFromAboveAddress.