Need Help Saving as a GIF

Thought I would come and ask the experts...

Last night I was trying to make an avatar for someone at our church's forums. The picture was of Patrick from SpongeBob. I used the clone tool and cloned him onto a new RGB image with no background (transparent Checked). I then did some touching up by erasing some of the background that was cloned from the first time so that all that was left was just the image of Patrick.

I gave him a drop shadow so that when he would be uploaded onto the forums he would have a raised appearance.

So I went to "Save for Web" and made it a .gif file. I chose the best resolution for the picture and when looking at the example from the four options, it looked just as I thought it would once uploaded to the forums.

Then I saved it and went to the forums to upload it. When the .GIF image came up it had like a white drop shadow along with the original drop shadow that I gave it. Sort of looked like it had a visible aura of white surrounding it. I played around with the image to try and resolve and get rid of the white aura but I gave up.

Does anyone have any Idea what I might have done wrong. And what steps should I take exactly to make sure that a .GIF file will not have a background?

PS. I did do some searching to find an answer and the one I found pretty much told me to do what I did last night. So your professional help is appreciated...

Thanks..

You have hit a well known area of problem for the web. It is pretty much nigh on impossible to have a drop shadow and a transparent background.

A workaround would be to have the 'transparent' section of you gif the same colour as your background and include the drop shadow in that section.

You probably know but gif's are based on a binary version of transparency, ie: on or off - whilst png's are alpha transparency, meaning that they can go from 1% - 100%

One other thing that may help, is defringing your image and or changing the matte colour for your gif. (info on both can be found in the help files)

yip as thehermit mentioned
just make sure the matte color matches the background of your page or if its a complex background pattern, just use the most common color from that pattern...

heres a little screeshot of what i mean
Save for the Web


as u can see i did a little test and my first problem, was i hoping that the transparency was sufficient... (first pic)

but by altering the matte color to match the background of the above htm page, the shadow on the transparency blended fine...(pic 2)

hope thats a clear guide for ya

cheers
heathrowe

HaHa

Guys just a little tip I recently found out about transprancy and .gif

I use Photoshop 6.0 :(

and I could not get drop shadow and glowing effect saved with transprancy but I found out how. You save as web as .gif although it will have a white outline after you open the gif file.
simply use eraser to delete all the white color but the key is to be able to distinguish between the drop shadow color and the excessive and save as web again and overwrite it again. If you guys still have a prob please pm me I'll be more than happy to help


Chang

Originally posted by X-fusion
HaHa

Guys just a little tip I recently found out about transprancy and .gif

I use Photoshop 6.0 :(

and I could not get drop shadow and glowing effect saved with transprancy but I found out how. You save as web as .gif although it will have a white outline after you open the gif file.
simply use eraser to delete all the white color but the key is to be able to distinguish between the drop shadow color and the excessive and save as web again and overwrite it again. If you guys still have a prob please pm me I'll be more than happy to help


Chang

So basically, open the saved file (the image should have the white background)

delete the white background/shadow area around the image,

Save for Web and overwrite the old image and that should work.

PS, I am using PS7, just in case that changes anything...

Okay, basically first, select the layer of object you want to save as gif, ctrl + click that layer, ctrl + c to copy it and select new >> file, (Do not change the size of the new file just make sure the option make background transparent is checked) paste the layer of object ctrl + v and now you have transparent image. First save for web. GIF selective, check the transparency box and that should do it, if it doesn't then use my method above. :D