The bounding box of the image will always be rectangular; there's no way around that.

Png supports transparent backgrounds (even wonderful 8-bit transparent backgrounds), but a lot of programs that support the png format do not support background transparency on pngs.

If you are working on a static web site, your best choice is probably to go with (yuck) gif.

If you're working on a dynamic web site, you can read the user-agent string to find out which browser is being used, and return the png if it's capable of handling transparent backgrounds, or a gif otherwise. (Mozilla has great support, IE doesn't support it at all).

If you're working on something for print, save it as a tiff. Pretty much any program that can handle a tiff can handle tiff alpha transparency.

--Joel

I want ot create a logo using a picture of an eagle, but I don't want the background to show when I use it. In other words I want. the figure to be eagle shaped, not rectangular. I already have the xcf version with a transparent background. Now, what format should I use to save the file? Png seems not to work, I still get the rectangle.

John Culleton

"Joel" == Joel writes:

Joel> If you are working on a static web site, your best choice is Joel> probably to go with (yuck) gif.

For a consistent view with *most* browers this probably is your best choice.

Joel> If you're working on a dynamic web site, you can read the Joel> user-agent string to find out which browser is being used, Joel> and return the png if it's capable of handling transparent Joel> backgrounds, or a gif otherwise. (Mozilla has great support, Joel> IE doesn't support it at all).

And I still can't figure out what Opera is doing to my PNGs with a transparent background. They look all the world as if it has converted it to an low-color indexed GIF. The only way around it has been to convert my logo to JPEG (and give up the transparency which Opera wasn't handling anyway) and accept a slightly softened image. Yuck.

roland