As I see it, any image you add through HTML code stays a transparent gif. Any image you put in the product pages in the image place holders gets translated to a jpg, but keeps it's transparent "look".

I right clicked on all the images in my product listings that I put in as transparent gifs and then clicked on the "Save image as" and they are now jpgs with a different name then what I originally gave them.

I can know understand this to be the "unsupported" issue you refer to.

It's confirmed. If you hang around here long enough, you start sounding like Jo Ann.

At least I don't LOOK like a Jo Ann with devil horns I might add!!

I resemble that remark! LOL

Well, I didn't mean to start anything, but I guess any discussion where we can learn something is good. To clarify, I should have stated I have CoffeeCup Shopping Cart Creator, CoffeeCup Shopping Cart Creator Pro, and CoffeeCup Shopping Cart Designer Pro. For what it's worth I also have a few more Coffee Cup programs
Steven wrote: "click on the picture in the products and this opens up a properties box on the right associated with those product picutres. Click on the background Tab and then you should see there where you can put a check mark in the box for "Transparent"
If you are talking about the Product Properties>Product Background menu in CCSCDP, this was one of the things I tried and it changes the background of the "box" the product is contained in, not the background of the actual thumbnail. (BTW, I increased the size per your suggestion, thanks. This is just a test shop at this point so I need to make all the improvements that I can before it goes live with real product.)
Scott wrote: "In Shopping Cart Designer Pro you have the ability to set the dimensions of the images on your shop. What you would then do is add your photos in Shopping Cart Creator only using those dimensions. All images are re-sampled if they do not match that size and transparent images are not supported at this time.
You can see how we did this over at our SWAG shop at http://swag.coffeecup.com"
Unfortunately, while I can certainly set some of the images to the dimensions specified, say the more horizontal rectangular images, unless I'm missing something obvious, I cannot see a way to do this with the verticle images. And since transparent images are not supported, many of the product images will not look right.

Hiya Hazy,

I think you're going to find that as mentioned in a few other threads so far on this subject, that you're going to need to match your background on your products yourself. In other words, figure out your background color number (or image which is more difficult), open an image editor, create a specific sized image of the size you want the large zoomed in image to be. I created mine at 480 x 480.

Now fill that image in with the color or texture you are using on your website for the background (keeping in mind that texture or images will probably not line up right so a solid color works better if you are trying to just make it look transparent. Once filled in, copy your actual product images onto that background, adjusting the size as neccessary to fit that new image. Taller or Shorter or smaller images will center automatically when pasted into the new image as a layer so there should be no problem there.

Once you have the image how you want it, merge the layers (go to the Layers menu and find the Merge setting and Merge Visible). Save it in .png or .jpg format (.png being the better quality) and that's it.

Use those images on your site and now it looks transparent.

Hazy,
Since SCCP and SCDP do not support transparencies (in the product area, anyway) the only real way to solve this problem is two fold. One is to change the background of your photos to match the background of your site, in this case, black. The other option would be to change the backgouund of your site to white. That way you could do transparencies that would be translated to jpg by the software as stated above giving you a white background to match the white of the site.

Personally, I think it would be easier to change the background of your photos to black. If you have Photo Shop Elements, or any good editing program, this would be fairly easy to do. And at the same time you could change them to be all the same size as mentioned above.

She beat me to it again!! Way to go Jo Ann!

Thanks for all the quick replies. I'm still working with the test shop: http://www.rookenterprizes.com/scott/shop/
and followed the suggestions to create black backgrounds on the images. It did take some experimenting with sizing to get the thumbnails to display without verticle white edges but it seems to finally be working correctly. Thank you all for the solution.
One problem is that the artist sent me images that are all over the place with sizing and resolution from tiny to huge so that will be addressed when I get the list of pictures she wants to actually sell. I've requested some fairly lage high resolution images so I can down-size them to what I need and still keep good detail when enlarged.
I do have a few more issues I hope someone would be kind enough to address.
When I select an image to look at, I get the larger image and the purchasing information but not the image description. I possibly have a font color setting wrong but I'm not sure where the setting is or is this normal behavior?
Secondly, when I am in the product detail view and again click on the image, I do get another view which I though should be even larger (the default image size?) but it is the same size as the product detail view. Can this be adjusted and also can the size of the display box be adjusted?
Thanks again

Hazy,
Glad you got it going right.
When you say you don't get the image description, are you talking about the product description? The one that you type in on the description page? Be aware that there are at least 3 pages to apply descriptions to. Did you miss one? If you have the font setting wrong it would have to be in SCDP.

All your images are resampled by the software and set to a predetermined size that cannot be changed. It would be nice though if we could change that. This does not apply to images you put in HTML code, only to the images entered into the products.

Thanks for addressing my issues. I think I'm further along with getting things set up the way the artist would like. I went through each setting in SCDP and checked the selections and that seemed to work. I do get a little confused at times as to what the menu choices actually do but trial and error seems to work for me.
It's too bad we can't change the display sizes - for artwork or other highly detailed items this would be a very desirable thing.
I am a bit confused when you say there are 3 pages ( in SCCP I assume) for applying descriptions. I know about the basic "product list" page with the short description and the "product detail" page for a longer, more detailed script, but what is the 3rd page? I seem to have missed it.
My next question ( I'm full of questions right now) concerns adding HTML. I normally use external CSS stylesheets to style page content and I know you can, of course, define in-line styles in an HTML page, but those styles are normally placed before the body of the page. Will adding styles just anywhere on a page work or is there a proper placement order or even a CSS style sheet that can be used for this? I hope I am making myself clear.
Thanks and Happy Holidays