Transparency is possible in a number of graphics file formats. There is two ways to achieve the image’s transparency:
- Bynary: one color entry in a single GIF image’s palette can be defined as “transparent” rather than an actual color. This means that when the decoder encounters a pixel with this value, it is rendered in the background color of the part of the screen where the image is placed, also if this varies pixel-by-pixel as in the case of a background image;
- Alpha: is an additional channel (not mandatory) that can be added to an image. It contains transparency information about each image pixel;
Make transparent an image with GIMP:
- open the image, you want to work on;
- adding alpha channel (transparent layer) by CLICKING menu > LAYER > TRANSPARENCY > ADD ALPHA CHANNEL;
- select the fuzzy selector – and with it, click & select the area you want to remove
- now let’s clear the area, by CLICKING menu EDIT > CLEAR (CTRL + K);
- now your image has transparent background and is possible to save in a transparent capable format, like GIF or PNG;