How to place an tranparent background over another image

[badger50]

I have a jpg 350 x 250 with a white background and a photo of a girls face within a round circle in the center.

I Tried to create a transparent background it did not work for me, so I used the background eraser tool (psp12)
So now I have a circular image with a transparent background.

I have another Image of the same size and I want to place this round image 350 x 250 with transparent background on top of
the second image 350 x 250

How can I do this ?

[LeviFiction]

copy the image with the transparent area and then paste it as a new layer on the other image.

[badger50]

I tried that, it did not work. The transparent image has the checkered background
I pasted it as a new layer and the pasted image showed a white background ?

[LeviFiction]

Can we get a look at your setup? Just hit the Prt Sc (Print Screen) button on your computer to take a picture of your screen then past it into PSP as a new image and save it out. Then upload it as an attachment here. Maybe there is something there that can explain it that I can't think of off the top of my head.

Also what can you tell us about the images? Are they GIF images?

[badger50]

I am enclosing the three images. I have tried to do it with a .jpg and a .gif

hc2.gif to lay on blueflower.gif





I notice that hc2.gif has the transparency working ? no idear why
did not work for me.

[Kathy_9]

Is this what you are trying to do? I copied and pasted the girl in the circle with the transparent background (your first attachment) as a new layer on the flower image. The circle around the girl didn't look quite right so I used the fuzz soft eraser brush to blend her in to the flower.

[badger50]

Not exactly what I was after, But I like it....Thanks

I would still like to know how to get a transparent background for future projects.

[Kathy_9]

Okay, using your second image (the one with the white background) as an example, you would first have to convert the background layer to a raster layer. You can do that by right-clicking on the background layer on the layers palette and selecting "Promote Background Layer". Next, since your background is a solid color (white) you can easily select it by using the magic want selection tool and then hitting delete. You should now see the checkerboard that indicates transparency.

Does this help?

[badger50]

I promoted the background to a layer, then selected the white and and hit delete
everything disappeared leaving a blank checkered image. Just an empty image.

You try it with my images and see what you get ? Its got me beat.

[LeviFiction]

Well, I am using PSPX4 in this video but for the most part between X2 and X4 these particular functions didn't seem to be touched at all. Watch the video let me know if any of your settings are different or if you notice that I'm doing something different from what you are doing. We'll see if we can't solve this.

This video was done using a factor default installation of PSPX4. You can reset your workspace to factory default by opening PSPX2 while holding the Shift key. But this should work for you if it works properly.

[badger50]

Thanks for the movie It is working now but with a few Hiccups on the way and
everything was not exactly as you described.

1. hc2.gif increase colour depth: 256 out of focus only RGB 16bit available
2.Blueflower also does not have 256 colors available.it is out of focus.
3. I promoted h2 background to a raster and set the magic wand as you described
clicked the wand on the white and marque appeared and hit delete
the white disappeared and was left with the image on a checkered background.
4. I guess the image must have had a 256 color depth otherwise
transparency would not have occurred.
5.I copied and pasted onto the flower and it worked
5. Nealy forgot I also started from a factory default.

Kathy mentioned in her response to me that she used the
fuzz soft eraser brush to blend girl in to the flower.

Where is the soft fuzz eraser brush?
Or is it a setting for the eraser tool? If what setting?

Thanks for your help

[LeviFiction]

Take the hardness setting down to 0 for a soft brush.

But she's referring to one of the pre-installed brush heads available to you called "Fuzz Soft"

Click on the brush image next to the "Presets" option but before the Brush "Shape" option to bring up a list of brush heads you can use. Find the one labeled "Fuzz Soft" and select that.

[badger50]

Thanks for speedy reply. I don't use all the features on psp as much as I should.

Just two more questions relating to transparency.
1. Must the Increase Color depth ALWAYS set to 256 color? or would 8 bit do.?
2. can you do transparency's with a .jpg or must it be a .gif ?

[LeviFiction]

GIFs can only be 256 colors, and you can set a specific color to be seen as transparent. I don't do this myself ever so exact instructions I can't give you. But when you are going to save it you can use the GIF export option to set up options like transparency.

8-bit is true-color and needed for true transparency. When you add layers or promote the layer to a raster layer it is auto-upgraded to 8-bit transparent.

JPG does not support transparency.

PNG, like JPG, supports the full 8-bit color depth and supports transparency. If you want top quality images that support transparency PNG is the way to go. But the image sizes are also larger.