Jo Ann, is there a way to make an image transparent so the background shows through? There are quite a few of them on the site with the white space all around that i would like to eliminate, one is attached

Hiya George,

some of them might take a bit of work in an image editing program, but if you have any access to one and any ability to use it, the thing I would first try would be to use the magic wand tool and see if you can outline the casket (or whatever item you want removed from that background) and then create a new image that has a transparent background (needs to be a .png or a .gif, and .png will give you a better quality and since they aren't too large of images it should be ok size and quality wise). Then paste that image you removed with the magic wand into the new transparent image and it should work pretty good.

Someone else may know a better way, but that's what I would do as that's what I usually try first

Hi Jo Ann, i made the transparent GIF using Paint Shop Pro but VSD doesn't seem to allow transparency when it is not on the background of the page. My images are on top of a grey image.

So, I used my handy paintbrush in in PSP and filled in all the white space on the pic with the color of the image behind it and wow, what a difference.. Now i have a lot of work to do but thanks for the suggestion, what a difference. You can see the results on the 'Life Sucks, Death Bites' page. Look at the podcast pic

juliekushner.com

George, in VSD you'll see a black background where the transparency should be, on the live site you'll have transparent image backgrounds instead of the black boxes.

Thanks Paintbrush. I tried converting a gif to be transparent but because it was not directly on the page background but the image was on top of a grey 'box' (which is on top of the page background), the transparency didnt work... Unless i am doing it wrong.....Am I?

Try it as a PNG - Use an image editor (per Jo ann's suggestion), magic wand to select the white background and delete it, then save for web (as PNG file). Photos tend to look better as PNGs rather than GIFs.
With PNG files, the image will be in a black box - only visible in the VSD editor. I'm guessing the grey box you see around your GIF is the same deal - try previewing and see what happens. In previews and live pages, you'll have transparency instead of the box.

The grey box is the image i have over the page background. I'll try it tongiht using PNG and see what happens, thanks for the suggestions!

Hiya george,

I've done them up for you as the magic wand was pretty tricky with the larger open casket and didn't want to behave so I just erased the background manually which wasn't too bad. Here ya go, attached at the bottom of this post

Here's my site. I'm using VSD for the bulk of it, with SCC for my little store.

http://www.historicinteriors.com

Hi Jo Ann wow this looks great, much appreciated for helping out. I did the Oscar on the bottom of the Hollywood Warlock page as a test, it worked... I must have messed up something on my last attempt.

You were 100% right on the images, what a difference they make now. The casket came out great! Almost inviting (well not yet) but did you notice the initials on the coffin!

I'll go through the rest of the site and clean up the images. Thanks again for your support and guidance.

George