Add transparency to an opaque image

Transparency is important when using sprites in screensavers. It permits to display a sprite over a background image without fully hiding it. Parts of the background image are visible through the transparent areas of the sprite. Transparency can be total (1-bit mask, in GIF for example) or partial (8-bit mask, a.k.a Alpha Channel, in PNG or JPEG2000 for example). Partial transparency (RGB/Alpha Channel) produces better results when displaying sprites.

The following image formats support transparency: Photoshop® PSD, PNG, RGB, JPEG 2000 and WMF. GIF support only total transparency. Axialis Screensaver Producer permits to convert images to 32 BPP (RGB/Alpha Channel) which is much more convenient to create sprites.

Add transparency to your image

1. Open your image. Choose the "Create Transparent Areas" Mode: or press "T". Click in the areas where you want to create transparency.

4. For example, the illustration below shows the image "Cursors\Tutorials\Arrow Add - Opaque.png". It is an RGB file without alpha channel, so it does not contains transparency. The background is white () and fully opaque. If you create a cursor from this image, it will create a white square around the final cursor, which is not the result we expect.

5. In Transparent Area mode, click in the white background (). It is automatically converted to a transparent area (the grey chessboard texture ). You can repeat the operation to create a sharper frontiere around the pointer:

When you create a transparent area, the image is automatically converted in 32-bit color depth (RGB / Alpha Channel).