On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 21:57:27 -0700
in alt.graphics.photoshop
Jack Black muttered something like this:

Hi, folks! I need your hand on something...

I have a PSD that I've created, containing a transparent background and all of the necessary elements on their own layers. I'm trying to save the result as a transparent GIF (background transparent). However, whenever I change the image from RGB to Indexed, all of the text layers go to hell! Result looks like complete crap!
Am I missing something here? I recall that in older PS when you wanted to save a GIF with a transparent background you could select all of the colors you wanted to make transparent, but that doesn't seem to work anymore. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Jack

Well, here's the right answer:

When saving to the GIF format and using transparency you NEED to use a matte color. The matte color should be set to whatever color you intend to have behind the GIF image as the background. IOW, if you're going to use the GIF with transparency on a web page over a black background, then set the GIF matte color to black. If it's for use on a web page that uses mostly blue, then you'd want to set your matte color to the correct shade of blue.

You can set the matte color in the "save for web.." dialog box.

If the image is going to be used in multiple places possibly over different color backgrounds, then you need to make seperate GIF files with seperate matte colors to match each background. This is one of the limitations of the GIF format. Without a matte color, as you have discovered, GIF files with tranparency look simply horrible.

Hope that helps. good luck.
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OuTpaTienT

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