How to Copy Signs from SignPuddle to your computer

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
January 20, 2011

On Jan 20, 2011, at 5:37 PM, Cherie Wren wrote:

> But if you want a transparent background instead of a solid white background:  I get the black mess too, in several different programs (word and powerpoint) so it might be a browser thing?
> cherie


Hi Cherie and everyone -

The point that both Steve and Bill taught us today is, that there is a difference between choosing "Copy Image" and choosing "Save Image" ...you need to Save the file to your desktop first, before inserting the image into another program...If you right-click on your mouse, and choose Copy Image, then you may get the black background. The best way to get the Transparent background is not to use Copy, but instead choose "Save Image" and download it to your desktop first. Once it has been "saved" to your desktop and given a new name, then you can open another program like Word or PowerPoint, and use the "Place Image" or "Insert Picture" commands inside those programs. The programs will ask you to find the file on your desktop to insert it - It is possible the transparency will be saved that way...but the Copy command doesn't hold the transparency because of the way the Windows clipboard works - anyway, that was my understanding of what they both said below - which is extremely h
 elpful - thank you Bill and Steve - 

See Bill and Steve's answers below...

Val;-)

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On Jan 20, 2011, at 12:02 PM, Bill Reese wrote:

> To add a bit to what Steve was saying, Windows Clipboard - where text and images are temporarily stored when you copy and paste - converts images to it's own supported formats.  These formats need to be 32-bit per pixel in order to support transparency's alpha channel.  However, on most systems you only get a 24-bit per pixel bitmap, which strips the transparency bits.  That means when you paste it, you'll get a background color instead of transparency.  And even if your system copies in a 32-bit per pixel format, the application you're pasting into may not accept the alpha channel and will show the background as a color.
> 
> As Steve suggests, saving the image to file will preserve it's format.
> 
> Bill
> 
> 
> On 1/20/2011 1:59 PM, Steve Slevinski wrote:
>> Hi Val and Eda,
>> 
>> The black background is probably caused by an incomplete copy of the image.  Basically, part of the image is not copied.  I'm not sure if this is operating system level or browser level.  I was never able to fix this, but there should be a work-around.
>> 
>> Instead of "Copy image" from the browser, use the "Save image as..." to create a file.  The new file will contain the transparent background part of the image.  If this file doesn't work properly in your application, then the application you're using does not fully support PNG images.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> -Steve
>> 
>> 
>