last updated: Feb. 1, 2001

Foreword: This tutorial will focus on making clean transparent objects for Desktop X

I've got an Image what do I do now?
You're have an image ready for DX, all you have to do now is to make parts of the image transparent, but you don't have the slightest clue as to what to do. Windows uses one color in a BMP file format to handle transparency, magenta, which is also called "true pink". Why only one color? Well, when you select this color you'll know why! I don't know if I'd ever use it; it's too bright. But if you did want to use it for whatever reason, there are other ways to make an object transparent, which will be explained later in the tutorial.

1. Open your image.
2. Select magenta(255,0,255) and use a fill tool, like the paint bucket to splash the background.
3. The image should look like this:
4. See the magenta doesn't show:

If you borrowed an image in GIF format, make sure to save it to BMP before you start editing or instead of seeing magenta when you fill, you'll see grey.


What is with the pink dirt?

Sometimes you get an object like this: or this .
This sometimes happens when you borrow images from the web. Because the internet only supports a few types (GIF and JPG being the most used) the backgrounds on images may appear to be one color, when in actuality they're not.

At first glance this BMP appears to have a solid magenta background .

See what happens when you zoom in:
This is only 300% larger and you can see the difference.

This also happens a lot when people use layers in programs like Photoshop because they don't fully understand anti-aliasing, how to use layers, or both.