Your GIF questions answered

How do I make my GIF transparent?
There are two ways you can do this one in Source view and one in Output view...

1. In Source view:Select your image by clicking on it. On the Inspector select Choose transparent from the Bitmap properties pane and in the resulting dialog box you can either pick your transparent colour from the bitmap or from the colour palette of the image. Press OK.
   
   or...
   
   
2. In output view: Click the Show palette button on the Palette pane on the Inspector. This opens the GIF palette. Now click in your image to select the colour you want to make transparent and it will be selected in the palette window. Now right click on that colour in the palette window and choose make transparent from the context sensitive menu.

I want to make a transparent GIF using more than one background colour. Can I do this?
Not automatically. There are two ways you can do this one in Source view and one in Output view...

1. In Source View:
   Change all the colours you wish to be transparent to the same colour. To do this select the Eyedropper tool, select the colour you want to change, then click on the colour displayed next to the Eyedropper in the toolbar, and select Change colour filter. Change the selected colour to the one you are going to make transparent and so on. Then select the colour you want to be transparent and click on the colour displayed next to the Eyedropper tool and select Make transparent.
   
   or...
   
   
2. In Output View:
   Click on the Show palette button to open the palette window. Then click on the colour in your image that you want to make transparent. It will be highlighted in the palette. Right click on it and choose make transparent. Choose the next colour in your image and repeat.

Why do my GIFs look grainy?
You have simulate 256 colour mode turned on. Click the 256 button on the toolbar to turn it off. is also shown next to the image when you're previewing it in 256 mode so that you can see when it's turned on.
 
256 colour mode shows you what your GIF will look like in a browser running on a computer that has only 256 colours available to it.
 
The images below illustrate this. (if they look the same, then you're currently running in a 256 colour mode) The right hand image is how the left hand image would look in Ignite with simulate 256 colour preview on, and, of course, how the left hand image would appear in a browser running on a machine with 256 colours.

smooth gif	grainy gif

In Ignite version 1.0 this option is on by default when you preview a GIF file (this is not the case in version 2). You can turn this default off in version 1 by selecting File>Options from the menus, switching to the Colour tab. Then uncheck the check box labelled

When previewing a GIF file, select 'Simulate 256 colours' by default (shows image as it would appear in a browser on a screen with 256 colour depth)

  Do you have a question that hasn't been answered here?
E-mail us at support@ignite-it.co.uk

contact support@ignite-it.co.uk
copyright © Ben Summers, 1999-2003. All rights reserved