JWG PSP7 Tutorials:
Transparent Dolls
When you have captured your doll from a dollmaker, she will arrive in PSP on a white or coloured background. You will need to put her onto a transparent background. This is how you do it:
Click on your doll and then click on the Magic Wand tool:
You will then see this box:
Generally I use these settings, but if a doll is wearing a lot of white, you might have to increase the tolerance to enable you to select your image. Sometimes you find in these cases, that the selection goes into the doll itself: That is usually because there are gaps in the outline of the clothing, and the selection is getting through these gaps. You then have to close these by clicking on the magnifying glass to enlarge your image, and fill in the missing pixels using the eye dropper and the paint brush tools.
If you are not familiar with these tools yet, my advice is to choose dolls wearing non-white clothes at first, until you become more confident and experienced using the program.
Click on the bottom left corner of your doll image and the outside edge of the canvas, and the doll should be selected:
If all the white areas have not been selected (this often happens with the area between the arm and the body for example), hold down your Shift key on the keyboard, and carefully select the errant areas: When you are happy that everything has been selected: Go to Selections on the menu and then click on Invert:
Just your doll should be selected now, not the outside edge of the canvas as well:
Go to the menu and click on Edit, then Cut:
Then open a new image 200x200 pixels with a transparent background: Right click on the title bar of the new image and choose "Paste As New Layer":
Your doll will appear in your new image, and you can use the mover tool to position her wherevever you want, and crop the image if necessary.
This method can be used to transfer any graphic from a white background to a transparent one. If your original graphic is a gif, you will need to increase colour depth to 16 million colours first. Go to colors on the menu, scroll down to Increase Color Depth, and then choose 16 Million Colors (24 bit)
Then proceed with the tutorial as above.
Back to Animated Doll Sig tutorial
For information on how to save your graphic on a transparent background in PSP, try my optimising graphics tutorial.
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