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1/ Take a sample colour of the background that you want to place the image on.
Most paint packages will allow you to store this on a color selection table.
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2/ Load the actual image that you want to place on the background.
At this stage you should ensure that the image is set to 16 million colours or better, in some packages this is called RGB colour mode. This will ensure that any paint operations have smoother colour gradients.
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3/ Use the paint fill (often called the paint bucket) tool to fill in the black areas of the image with the sample colour of the background. Use the anti-alias option to blend the color with the existing black, the tolerance should also be set to a value that removes any harsh edges but does not fill parts of the image that you want to place on your page. This may take a bit of trial and error to get spot on, so be ready to hit the undo button if you fill too much of the image.
You should end up with something like this. To retain all the colours you should now save it as a BMP image.
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4/ Reduce the final image to indexed colour GIF format. This can be done with the LiquidFX Pro image optimization tool, simply load the BMP file and reduce the image to the lowest colour value that retains the best image definition, ensure that there is no dithering set. The reason you do not want dithering for the GIF image is that with solid colours the GIF converter tends to fill them with a two-tone mesh in an attempt to recreate the base colour. When this occurs you will not be able to set a good GIF transparency. So turn off the dithering!
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5/ Now that the image is reduced and the background colour is set, you can test it on the page. Most of the time you will find the the colours are slightly off. They may either be lighter or darker. This effect becomes more evident in a larger image with quite a bit of solid background colour.
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6/ To get rid of the slight colour variation all you need to do is load the GIF in the LiquidFX Pro GIF transparency tool and click on the brown background color, then save out the GIF image. This does two things, firstly it removes the bulk of the off-coloured image background and secondly it creates a blending effect with the background colour. The effect is ideal for making compact icons that blend into the background and do not leave unsightly edges or off-coloured boxes.
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