GIF Palettes

[Shanester]

Greetings,

I've opened a GIF file in the Edit workspace. When I click Image > Palette > Set Palette Transparency, I get an error message:

Auto Actions
The following changes are needed to proceed with your Set Palette Transparency action:
The image must be flattened into a single background layer.
Image must be converted to a 256 color palette.
	OK	Cancel	Help
In the future:	Prompt me before taking these actions
		Always take these actions

How do I find out how many layers the GIF has? The Layers palette only shows one layer.

The other line said the "Image must be converted to a 256 color palette". I thought the default color palette for a GIF was 256 colors. How can I find out what kind of palette this image has? Image > Palette > Edit Palette is greyed out.

Thanks,
Shane.

[Forriner]

I assume you did some editing to the image before wanting to define transparency.

What's the name of the layer in the layer palette? If the name is not 'Background' then the background was changed by some action you took on the image, some editing, often to a raster layer. Flattening it (merging all layers) creates a Background layer again.

Editing is almost certain because the colour depth was also raised to more than 256 colours, and has to be converted back to 256 in order to set transparency. There are things PSP can't do to a 256 colour image so the depth had to be raised to 8 or 16 bits.

Under File/Preferences/General program preferences/Auto action you can check (and change if you want) what PSP does when action needs to be taken in order to do what you're trying. The top are the colour depth changes options, and just below those are layer promotions etc.. Actions can be done Never, Always automatically, or you get a Prompt.

Sorry, had too little sleep last night so my English is atrocious today. I hope you can understand.
If you're finished with editing and want to define transparency, just say OK to the prompt, PSP will flatten and reduce depth, and you can finish.

[Shanester]

I assume you did some editing to the image before wanting to define transparency.

I took a screen-shot of a browser window, pasted it into Paint, then saved it as a GIF. The image was mostly straight lines with a few colours, so I thought that a GIF would have a small file size with no loss of quality.

What's the name of the layer in the layer palette? If the name is not 'Background' then the background was changed by some action you took on the image, some editing, often to a raster layer. Flattening it (merging all layers) creates a Background layer again.

The name of the (only) layer is Raster 1. I haven't taken any actions on the image.

Editing is almost certain because the colour depth was also raised to more than 256 colours, and has to be converted back to 256 in order to set transparency. There are things PSP can't do to a 256 colour image so the depth had to be raised to 8 or 16 bits.

I didn't realize that a GIF could have more than 256 colors. When I click Image > Count Image Colors, it says that "The number of unique colors used in this image is 172". I actually wasn't trying to set transparency, I was just fooling around trying to figure out why "Edit Palette" is greyed out. When I click Image > Decrease Color Depth > 256 Color Palette, the name of the layer changes to Background, and the Edit Palette option is now working again.

Thanks for your help.
Shane.