Transparent images

[AmazingAnt]

If I wanted to make transparent images for a web page, what format would I want to save them as to keep the transparency?

[AnotherDesigner]

You need to save it as a .gif or .png
a .jpg won't preserve the transparency settings

[AmazingAnt]

Well since i'm using Photoshop, It automatically goes with .psd files. But being a "photoshop image file", I figured that'd be a bad idea for web design. I know that some file types will have better quality, and some will be smaller, and then .jpgs are very nice and very small until you edit them and save them, then they get crappy.(Photoshop does a veeerrrry nice job of high-quality low-filesize .jpgs) I usually just save things in an extremly high-quality file format and then just make a seperate .jpg to use on the site. But which format would you suggest I use?

[Albatross]

Click File > Save For Web and then choose GIF, PNG-8 or PNG-24 in the options it provides. Keep in mind that IE <7 does not support alpha-transparency (which is what makes PNG-24 really shine).

[AmazingAnt]

Ok, thanks, but I was asking which format was recommended, not how to get it there.

[Albatross]

It depends on the quality of the image. If you're looking for 8-bit graphics (basic background transparency) either GIF or PNG-8 will do. If you need to create stunning graphics (with lossless compression) using alpha-transparency, then PNG-24 is the way to go... only problem with PNG-24 is that Internet Explorer (up through version 6) doesn't understand alpha-transparency.

[AmazingAnt]

Ok, so unless I want really good quality, I should stick to either gif of png-8, and then I shouldn't really use png-24 with it's alpha-transparency for now, since i'm the only person who's been to my sites who has IE7, and the majority uses IE6 instead of Firefox or Opera. Well, IE7 will move out of beta soon, and then most users will move up. Thanks!

[Albatross]

For now, yes. When IE7 comes out, most people will have IE7 installed on their computers by default. The rest (Win2K, Win98SE mainly) will still be on IE6. At that time, you should have no problem serving a pngfix.htc file to IE6 via a conditioanl comment, or using JavaScript (if it's even possible, which I'm sure it is) instead.

[AmazingAnt]

Yea, javascript can. I forgot how ages ago, but I know I can use $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] with my php to find out what the client is using, so that serve out a different method for IE6 people. Thanks again!

[snowf22]

Open up into a program (free) called Giffy. Can make any GIF file/BMP file have transparency. I got it at:
http://superziggy.be/
Tutorials--Giffy 101