The disappearance of transparency.

The disappearance of transparency.


Once upon a time, in the time of Windows 95, there was a program called Paint.
This was part of the Windows 95 operating system.

With this program you could save a gif image file with a transparent background.
Then with the death of Windows 98 or the birth of Windows XP, paint lost this option to save a file with a transparent background.

Don't panic thou, as Microsoft Photo Editor, (part of Windows XP operating system) can global fill with transparency.

Photo Editor can also save files in the png format as well as gif and other formats.
So we can now save images with a transparent background in the gif or png format.

So now you have Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can use Photo Editor to save images with a transparent background?

Where is Microsoft Photo Editor?
O' it's disappeared!

To run Microsoft Photo Editor on Windows Vista or Windows 7.
1; Copy all the files in directory C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\PhotoEd
from your Windows XP.
2; Save the files in any directory on your new Windows Vista or Windows 7 computer.
3; You don't even need to set PHOTOED.EXE to run in 'Windows XP compatibility mode'.

The files in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\PhotoEd are;
PHOTOED.EXE
PHOTOED.HLP
CHALKCHA.dll
EMBOSS.dll
GRAPHICP.dll
NOTEPAPE.dll
PHOTOED.cnt
photoed.gid
STAINEDG.dll
STAMP.dll
TEXTURIZ.dll
WATERCOL.dll
1033\PEINTL.dll

You may only need to copy PTOTOED.exe, but I have not tested this.

Here is an image with a transparent background.

The left half of the image was on a black background
and the right half on a wight background,
before using Photo Editor to give the image a transparent background.

Use the transparent control to set how close a colour is to the background colour to become transparent or not.