Colour --> Transparent ? (X9)

[TroyTheTech]

It may just be me missing the Function somewhere, but I cannot seem to find an easy way (or any way really) to take a colour [sorry for my Canadian spelling] and magically make it 'transparent' in X9...

I tried the Magic Wand and Select Colour, but that turns into a blotchy mess, no matter what settings I try (it could just be the way I am selecting it?). Colour changer doesn't seem to allow changing to Transparent.
I am wondering if there is a way to simply say: that colour? "Make it so"...

Sorry to mention a 'competitor' product, but I find myself falling back to The GIMP (now just "GIMP"?), which has this exact function. Select Colour (eg. white or black or red) > Make Transparent. The function is called "Colour To Alpha".

Something for The Suggestion Thread?

Thanks for any ideas - I am enjoying X9 otherwise (they got me with the new Gradient feature)!

[hartpaul]

I have not used Gimp in a long time. Are you saying that Gimp Select Color will select say all the shades of yellow and then be able to make them transparent without leaving say a, orange yellow . Or are you talking about single colors rather than the whole range of shades of a color.

Closest thing in PSP might be to use the magic wand with Match mode set to Color, Mode to Add and vary the tolerance to allow for varieties in shading. A single color is a pushover for PSP.

[TroyTheTech]

I have not used Gimp in a long time. Are you saying that Gimp Select Color will select say all the shades of yellow and then be able to make them transparent without leaving say a, orange yellow . Or are you talking about single colors rather than the whole range of shades of a color.

Closest thing in PSP might be to use the magic wand with Match mode set to Color, Mode to Add and vary the tolerance to allow for varieties in shading. A single color is a pushover for PSP.

Thank you for your reply (that was fast!). You are correct, a single colour is fine, especially when it is a contiguous piece. What I mean is, a colour that is 'throughout' an element, like a texture.

For example, I have some white lettering I would like to take the colour BLACK out of, so that it is transparent in those areas where black was (not just the outside but the 'texture' on the lettering). Here is what the original looks like:

test trans lett 0.png (8.2 KiB) Viewed 3386 times

Here is what the 'colour to alpha' function does in GIMP:

test trans lett 1 gimp .png (7.4 KiB) Viewed 3386 times

It gets 'all of of the black' and does it smoothly. It is not adjustable though (but one could adjust the shade of black/grey to 'get rid of').

Here is what I could get the Magic Wand to do in PSPX9:

test trans lett 2 pspx9 Magic Wand .png (8.61 KiB) Viewed 3386 times

I tried various settings of the Tolerance, but it cannot seem to get the 'texture' colouring (the black on top of the white lettering), even if "Contiguous" is Deselected.


Edit:
I seem to have found that Background Eraser does what I want, but I have to play with the settings a lot, yet.

Here is what BG Eraser looks like, with the Discontiguous and Ignore Lightness options checked (quick job):

test trans lett 3 pspx9 BG eraser (discontig, ignore light) .png (2.91 KiB) Viewed 3386 times

It is ignoring the boundaries more and 'taking out the black on top' of the lettering, but needs tweaking to figure out how to get it how I would like...


Still open to ideas!

[hartpaul]

In your PSP example using Add mode will also allow you to select all the grey areas as well. Then add a new raster layer and flood fill the selection with the color required and merge.
I noticed that there was a small spot of black in the A and am guessing that in gimp it would have left some transparent spots there.
By being able to select all the areas inside of the letters with the magic wand (I used Brightness as the Match mode) and then used the freehand selection to include the outlier black spot in the A.

[Cassel]

You can also use the Select Color Range.

To do that:
- Select all (Ctrl-A)
- Selection > Modify > Select Color Range
- pick the color you want to keep, adjust the tolerance and the smoothness (in your example, the white)
- check the Subtract Color Range (as it will remove that color from the ALL selection)
- click OK

Now you will have everything BUT your white selected and you can delete the extra.