# How can I make this PNG transparent?



## Volkodav (Mar 31, 2011)

Alright, so I'm doing art for another site... and someone has a "ghost" dog. This dog's colours are low opacity so you can see through em.. y'know?
anyways, I'm drawing their dog and I think.. how can I make this transparent so that it looks like a ghost?
I can delete the background, but all the kinda "see-through" bits here I want low opacity....there IS colour in the ear and nose [flesh-coloured] and there is shading.





I added a background underneath so that you can see what I mean by low opacity. I want that to stay that way when they put the dog on their profile. Y'know?




I apologize if this is shittily described.
I am using Easy Paint Tool SAI.

EDIT: I cannot simply "delete the colours in the ears and nose" because there's shading in the ears and there's colour in them. But I will do so if it's the only thing I can do.


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## Monster. (Mar 31, 2011)

Are you asking how to keep the pixels in the lineart? Or do you want to make the _whole_ dog transparent? _Or_, are you asking how to make the ears/nose transparent? Just to clarify; it's a tad confusing.


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## Volkodav (Mar 31, 2011)

Gaz said:


> Are you asking how to keep the pixels in the lineart? Or do you want to make the _whole_ dog transparent? _Or_, are you asking how to make the ears/nose transparent? Just to clarify; it's a tad confusing.


 Lol I apologize.
The dog and lines are supposed to stay at 100% opacity. The cheek fur, ears and nose are supposed to be low opacity but NOT 0% transparency because there is some colour there

EDIT: the cheek fur is supposed to be 0% opacity


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## Monster. (Mar 31, 2011)

Okay, that makes more sense. Well once you've lowered the opacity and such, just save it as a .gif or .png. When you save it as either, it'll keep the transparency _and_ the pixels intact. That help?


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## Volkodav (Mar 31, 2011)

Gaz said:


> Okay, that makes more sense. Well once you've lowered the opacity and such, just save it as a .gif or .png. When you save it as either, it'll keep the transparency _and_ the pixels intact. That help?


 Saved it as a PNG and opened it on a blue background. Nothing is low-opacity. 
Can't save it as a GIF in SAI

EDIT: I want to be able to see the blue background through the ears and nose, through the light pink flesh colour


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## Folgrimeo (Mar 31, 2011)

As I'm used to GIMP, I suggest adding an alpha layer and then erasing parts with an eraser set to some low opacity. The more transparent something is, the more that odd gray checkerboard pattern will be visible. I believe there's also a way to add a layer (probably a grayscale image) to act as an alpha mask. I believe white for no transparency and black (or gray checkerboard) for full transparency. In short, I'm saying create an alpha mask.

PNG allows 256 levels of transparency, so some parts can be more see-through than others. GIF only has not-transparent and fully-transparent, where you can only choose one color in the image to be see-through (in that case, if some color is being transparent by accident, change those parts to some similar color. This is why I make a background purple and set that as transparent).


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## Volkodav (Mar 31, 2011)

Folgrimeo said:


> As I'm used to GIMP, I suggest adding an alpha layer and then erasing parts with an eraser set to some low opacity. The more transparent something is, the more that odd gray checkerboard pattern will be visible. I believe there's also a way to add a layer (probably a grayscale image) to act as an alpha mask. I believe white for no transparency and black (or gray checkerboard) for full transparency. In short, I'm saying create an alpha mask.
> 
> PNG allows 256 levels of transparency, so some parts can be more see-through than others. GIF only has not-transparent and fully-transparent, where you can only choose one color in the image to be see-through (in that case, if some color is being transparent by accident, change those parts to some similar color. This is why I make a background purple and set that as transparent).


 I might be confused about what you're saying, but I mean.. I don't want the ears and nose 100% transparent. I want them pink but slightly transparent.
EDIT: So if I use GIMP and erase the pink at like 50 opacity.. then save as a PNG, the ears shouldbe slightly see-through?


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## Monster. (Mar 31, 2011)

Clayton said:


> Saved it as a PNG and opened it on a blue background. Nothing is low-opacity.
> Can't save it as a GIF in SAI
> 
> EDIT: I want to be able to see the blue background through the ears and nose, through the light pink flesh colour


Shoot, you can't? Hmm...maybe wait for a SAI expert. Sorry I can't help.


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## Volkodav (Mar 31, 2011)

Gaz said:


> Shoot, you can't? Hmm...maybe wait for a SAI expert. Sorry I can't help.


 it's alright. I have SAI, GIMP and PSE 5.0 if that helps any


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## ArielMT (Mar 31, 2011)

In GIMP, open the image and set the image mode to RGB. Separate the pixels you want translucent and opaque into separate layers.  If you need to, add the alpha channel to your layers: Layer -> Transparency -> Add Alpha Channel.  Delete the background pixels, or the layer if you separated the background into its own layer.  Change the opacity of the translucent layer, merge visible layers, and save as PNG.  (I'm going by memory, so take it for what it's worth.)


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