converting to transparent

G
Posted By
gmhalpe
May 12, 2004
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I have a jpg file I scanned from a black ink line drawing on a white paper. I would like to insert this drawing into an application such as MS Word but I do not want the white rectangular background surrounding the black lines to show – since I want to print onto a non-white paper. Can I convert all of the white areas in my jpg file into transparent using a simple selection and color change procedure?

Thanks!
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conversion transparency

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O
Odysseus
May 12, 2004
In article ,
(soapnut) wrote:

I have a jpg file I scanned from a black ink line drawing on a white paper. I would like to insert this drawing into an application such as MS Word but I do not want the white rectangular background surrounding the black lines to show – since I want to print onto a non-white paper. Can I convert all of the white areas in my jpg file into transparent using a simple selection and color change procedure?
I don’t know what works best with Word, but JPEG is a particularly inappropriate format for ‘line art’ images without shades of grey. I’d try converting it to one bit of depth and saving as a TIFF — but you’ll get better results if you have an original high-resolution scan in some format other than JPEG. At any rate many programs will print one-bit TIFF images as transparent, or at least provide an option to do so.

Note also that in any layout application (which just barely includes Word, I guess) ‘white’ areas will always appear in the paper colour, unless by "non-white paper" you mean that you have a background image or texture that will be printed underneath the drawing in question. No ordinary printer will actually print in white so as to hide the substrate, so unless your drawing is actually overlapping other elements the white background may not be a problem at all.

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Odysseus
JD
Jon Danniken
May 12, 2004
"soapnut" wrote:
I have a jpg file I scanned from a black ink line drawing on a white paper. I would like to insert this drawing into an application such as MS Word but I do not want the white rectangular background surrounding the black lines to show – since I want to print onto a non-white paper. Can I convert all of the white areas in my jpg file into transparent using a simple selection and color change procedure?

This is what I do:

ctrl-A
ctrl-C
ctrl-N, alt-T, ENTER
ctrl-V
/magic wand tool, click on white
ctrl-X

Jon
EG
Eric Gill
May 12, 2004
(soapnut) wrote in news:84a09157.0405111736.45009329
@posting.google.com:

I have a jpg file I scanned from a black ink line drawing on a white paper. I would like to insert this drawing into an application such as MS Word but I do not want the white rectangular background surrounding the black lines to show – since I want to print onto a non-white paper. Can I convert all of the white areas in my jpg file into transparent using a simple selection and color change procedure?

There is no such thing as transparency in jpeg. Period.

Monochrome tiffs are the traditional way of handling such, but placing them in Word throws all certainty out the window.
T
tacitr
May 12, 2004
I have a jpg file I scanned from a black ink line drawing on a white paper.

You’ve already started down the wrong path.

JPEG is "lossy." It degrades the quality of an image. Never, ever use JPEG for anything other than the Web, or other situations where file size is important but image quality is not important. Get out of the habit of using JPEG unless you KNOW you specifically need JPEG.

If the image is truly a line drawing, scan it as (or convert it to) a bitmap, not grayscale, and save as TIFF.

I would like to insert this drawing into an application such as MS Word but I do not want the white rectangular background surrounding the black lines to show

JPEG does not support transparency; you will never succeed at making a JPEG transparent. A bitmap TIFF, however, should be transparent.

However, whether or not it works in Word is something of a crapshoot, as Word has arguably the poorest handling of placed images you’ll ever see in any big-name application.

since I want to print onto a
non-white paper.

If you just want to print on non-white paper, print the image with a white background on non-white paper! Your priter has no white ink. It never prints anything white. If you print a picture with a white background onto green paper, the background will be green, not white–because your printer is incapable of printing the color white.

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xalinai_Two
May 13, 2004
On 12 May 2004 15:36:02 GMT, (Tacit) wrote:

I have a jpg file I scanned from a black ink line drawing on a white paper.

You’ve already started down the wrong path.

JPEG is "lossy." It degrades the quality of an image. Never, ever use JPEG for anything other than the Web, or other situations where file size is important but image quality is not important. Get out of the habit of using JPEG unless you KNOW you specifically need JPEG.

When image sizes are big enough then JPG at low compression settings can be used. If your images are in a size range of 4000 pixels or more in the shorter direction, where even an A3 size print would be in the 300+ppi range, the artifacts from JPG become so small (42 JPG blocks per inch) that you can’t see them at normal viewing distances.

For anything smaller you are absolutely right.

If the image is truly a line drawing, scan it as (or convert it to) a bitmap, not grayscale, and save as TIFF.

One-Bit images sometimes compress better as PNG instead of LZW/TIFF or CCITT/TIFF.

Michael

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