Working with GIFs and AppleWorks

[Sheilia & Terry Scott]

I've added an older message from George Slusher that might help with working with GIF images in AppleWorks documents. Hope this helps. On Monday, July 14, 2003, at 04:54 AM, graphicconverterforum@yahoogroups.com wrote: > Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 10:07:53 -0400 > From: Noel Baebler <nbaebler@mindspring.com> > Subject: Re: Newbie with a question > > Howdy, > > I must be doing something wrong, too. > > I have a .gif image with a greyed out transparency background. When I > SELECT ALL and DRAG and DROP to an AppleWorks draw document, the > background of the .gif image is Solid. No transparency. > > What am I missing? > > Noel > Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 03:50:08 -0700 > From: George Slusher <gslusher@rio.com> > Subject: Re: gif transparency > > What am I doing wrong? > > My .gif 89a clipart with transparent backgrounds when imported or copy > 'n pasted to AppleWorks docs (draw, wp, or paint) always have a solid > white background. > > Where did the transparency go? > > It all depends upon HOW you import the GIF--you can retain transparency > in a way, if the transparent color is white. If it isn't, you can use > graphic converter to change that color to white. To do this: > > - Make a copy of the image file and work on the copy only, in case > something gets screwed up. > > - Open the file in Graphic Converter. > > - In the tool bar, click on the transparency tool (the magic wand with a > T). Click on the transparent background and it will change to its "real" > color. > > - In the Picture menu, drag down to "Color" and choose "Edit color > table." > > - Find the transparency color (if it's not white, it's probably > something > far from the rest of the image) and click on its square. > > - You'll see the RGB values for the color. Change those to all read 255; > that will be pure white. > > - With the transparency tool, click on the background. It should become > transparent again. > > > To put this into an AppleWorks document: > > - Open an AppleWorks Drawing document. > > - Drag the GIF file's icon onto the document. > > - Select the image. In the toolbar or in the accents panel, click on the > Fill icon. (It's the top or left of the three.) Click on the pattern > palette. (Not the color palette) Choose the transparent pattern > option--it has two transparent squares and should be the top left > choice. > > - Bingo! The image is now transparent. > > I don't think that this will work in a painting document. I don't use > painting documents very much, as I am no artist. (OTOH, you can do some > neat things with the perspective, slant, stretch, and free rotate > tools.) > > In a word processing document, you can do the same thing as in a Drawing > document, if you want the image to be "floating," rather than "inline." > > - Click on the pointer tool (the flashing cursor should disappear). > > - Drag the GIF image's icon onto the word processing document. (You can > also define a floating painting frame on the word processing document > first.) > > - Make sure that the image is selected and do the same as above with the > Fill control. You may also want to click on the pen control and select > "None" in the pen width palette to eliminate the border around the > image. > > Note that irregular text wrap doesn't work well, if at all, with > complicated images. The results will probably look just like regular > text > wrap--IOW, the text will wrap around the frame, rather than the > contents. > > If you use a clipping, this may not work unless the clipping was created > with transparency as I've described. Most of the clippings that come > with > AppleWorks do have transparency, but those you create may not. If they > don't have it, the pattern palette trick won't do anything. > > I hope that this helps. > > George Slusher/Eugene, OR > gslusher@rio.com > __ Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.