Carol's GIMP Question

[JackWolfgang]

Carol asked this question in the introductions forum:

I am having trouble changing a mat color on Gimp. lol I have been trying for a week. I have been given instructions and part of them work, but when I click the paint bucket after having the proper background color chosen, the background changes to deep gray. It was originally white. If you or anyone else has an idea about this, please let me know. However, the process works when I change the color back to white. I am working with the UMC logo. I think I am missing something very basic here. I don't know what it is.

Carol--
I've just started using the GIMP myself, but I do not have it here at work. I'll look at the question and the answer tomorrow. What it does sound like is you have the opacity on the paint bucket tool set at less than 100%.

[flutem3]

Carol asked this question in the introductions forum:



Carol--
I've just started using the GIMP myself, but I do not have it here at work. I'll look at the question and the answer tomorrow. What it does sound like is you have the opacity on the paint bucket tool set at less than 100%.

Hi, Jack,

I have the paint bucket set at 100%. In that dialog box are all kinds of other things regarding hue, saturation, r, b, g, normal, etc. I think, perhaps I have those set incorrectly. It is surprising to me that I can easily switch the mat color back to white. But I am unable to get it the color I want it to be.

Re: "select this region" How do you "unset" the setting or release it however that is phrased. The only way I can get it "unset" so to speak is to get rid of the image which, of course, is not the idea of the thing.

If you think I have trouble with a program like Paint you are right. I have a terrible time with these things. But bit by bit I will get there.

A guy told me that we want a "seamless" design. That makes sense to me. He fixed the logo on the home page so I could see what a difference it makes. And it does. If you check the logo on that page with the logo on any other page except a white one, you can really see the difference.

Does it ever get easy? :) I know the answer because some things are very easy now!!

Thanks for your help. I hope you can discover what I am doing wrong. I know it is just one tiny thing, but I haven't accidentally stumbled on it yet.

Carol

[JackWolfgang]

Hi, Jack,

I have the paint bucket set at 100%. In that dialog box are all kinds of other things regarding hue, saturation, r, b, g, normal, etc. I think, perhaps I have those set incorrectly. It is surprising to me that I can easily switch the mat color back to white. But I am unable to get it the color I want it to be.

Re: "select this region" How do you "unset" the setting or release it however that is phrased. The only way I can get it "unset" so to speak is to get rid of the image which, of course, is not the idea of the thing.

If you think I have trouble with a program like Paint you are right. I have a terrible time with these things. But bit by bit I will get there.

A guy told me that we want a "seamless" design. That makes sense to me. He fixed the logo on the home page so I could see what a difference it makes. And it does. If you check the logo on that page with the logo on any other page except a white one, you can really see the difference.

Does it ever get easy? :) I know the answer because some things are very easy now!!

Thanks for your help. I hope you can discover what I am doing wrong. I know it is just one tiny thing, but I haven't accidentally stumbled on it yet.

Carol

Excuse this rant, but if he had fixed the logo, he would have given it to you as a transparent GIF or PNG so that it would work on most pages.

Just an observation, but I wouldn't change the background color on the pages. It might make people thing they went to another site.

[flutem3]

Jack wrote:

"Excuse this rant, but if he had fixed the logo, he would have given it to you as a transparent GIF or PNG so that it would work on most pages.

Just an observation, but I wouldn't change the background color on the pages. It might make people thing they went to another site."

Hi, Jack,

So far people have not seemed to be confused and like the color. As you have notice, I have used various shades of liturgical colors. However, when I redesign, I may change it. I don't know yet.

I have the logo as a transparent .gif. However, on pages with colors, there are specks of white which show through. When that guy matted the blue one, the specks were gone. I then downloaded the logo with the blue mat which just worked great. He has told me how he did it. However, so far I have not been able to do anything but get the color from the strange shades of gray I end up with back to white using the instructions I was given. Therefore, I am still stuck. He also said that "transparent" isn't really transparent, but I am not positive what they means. :confused: I am puzzled. I really do want the pages to look nice so I will just keep at it. If one person can do it, eventually I can do it too...I hope.

Carol

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Carol,

I have to agree with Jack regarding background colors. One of the hallmarks of good graphic design is consistency, be it consistency of form (the placement of elements on a printed page or web page), consistent background color on all pages of a website, consistent choice of fonts, etc. Websites should have a consistent background color (or just white) on all pages. A tasteful background is also OK, too.

(When I first did my research of 1000s of church websites, I saw a lot of awful backgrounds. I stated in my tips pages on my website that designers should avoid patterned backgrounds. I updated my database of well-designed church websites back in November 2005. I noticed at that time that tasteful background patterns were making a comeback. But if one doesn't know how to make a tasteful background for a website, he or she shouldn't even try.)

With regard to the logo:

Choose one color for your background color on all pages on your site. Then make that color the background of your logo, in your graphics program. Then export your logo. Your logo will look fine on all pages of your site, because it has a built-in background that's the same as the background of your site (now on all pages of your site).

I don't believe there's really such a thing as a "transparent" gif. All you can do is choose ONE color, out of potentially many in a .gif, to be "transparent." Any other colors, including those that look to the naked eye as nearly the same as the color chosen to be "transparent," will NOT be transparent.

Most logos will have curves and rounded edges. On a computer, in order to make those curves and rounded edges look smooth, the graphic has to "anti-aliased." If you look closely at an anti-aliased line or edge, you'll see the line or edge surrounded or filled out with tones of color that are similar to but not quite the same as the color of the line itself or the color of the shape the edge of which has been anti-aliased. You can't set all those slight variations of color along the line or edge to "transparent" in a "transparent" .gif ? because, as stated, you can only set one color to transparent.

That is why you get the white (actually, white and nearly white) specks you mentioned. You probably have a white background for the logo in your graphics program.

The only way around this problem is to give the logo the same background as the web page (or preferrably, website) before you export it from the graphics program. When you do this, you don't even have to make the gif transparent.

If you choose to have many different background colors on your website, you're just making more work for yourself and your visitors. Here's why:

You'll have to create a separate version of the logo for EACH web page. Each version will have had to have been made with a background the same as the page upon which it will be displayed. Now you'll have many versions of the logo. You'll have to name each one slightly differently. You'll have to come up with a naming scheme that enables you to remember which slight variation of logo goes on which page. Further, because your visitors' browsers will have to download what is a really a new gif every time they visit a different page with different background color on your site, the download time for your site will increase.

By contrast, if you use one background color for all pages on your site, then you only have to create, export, and keep track of one art file for the logo. One a visitor has arrived at your home page, this single, site-wide logo gif will be downloaded and cached on his or her computer. The browser won't have to download the file again each time the visitor goes to another page on the site. (That's why browsers download and cache graphics and pages; it reduces download times because art and pages only have to be downloaded once.)

Thus, by choosing to use different background colors for your site, you are: 1) increasing your own workload, 2) increasing the download time for your site.

My advice, then: Choose one color for a background, and use it for all pages on your site.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[JackWolfgang]

Good Explanation, David.

Allow me to say that the PNG (Portable Network Graphic) format supports true transparency, but as I recall, the transparency is not supported on all browsers yet.

Carol, I'll try to get in the GIMP later in the week, but I have been stuck in PHP, XHTML, XML, and JavaScript today. Please accept my apologies.

[flutem3]

David,

Thank you for your explanation. I don't mind the extra work, but if it isn't going to look right then I must change. I am working on a redesign right now. But I am not too far along with it. I am going to need to do some more thinking about what I need to do because I want it to look good. David, I use what UMC.org considers a "transparent" logo. I have an anti-aliasing tool but don't know how to use it. Is now the time? :)

Thanks for the information.

Jack, thanks for checking out the Gimp because I still need to know how to do that.

I sure do appreciate everyone's interest and help. Thank you so much.

Carol

PS David, I like the new spell check. I haven't seen one like it before.

[flutem3]

David wrote:

"Choose one color for your background color on all pages on your site. Then make that color the background of your logo, in your graphics program. Then export your logo. Your logo will look fine on all pages of your site, because it has a built-in background that's the same as the background of your site (now on all pages of your site)."

David,

This is what I have been trying to explain in my bumbling way that I have been trying to do and cannot accomplish no matter what I try. The background goes to a gray color that is just barely tinged with the color I am trying to make it e. g. gray barely tinged with green or blue. But the process works when changing that color back to white.

I am tried all kinds of things, but I am missing something basic. I am unable to do it in paint either.

Thanks to one and all.

Carol