ok so i have a big question about photoshop and animated gifs… if u take a look at my bison avatar the top of his hat(where its transparent) is super jaggy and i cannot stand how that looks but for the love of me i cannot figure out how to make it smooth… ive looked up many guides on how to do this sort of thing but it never works for me(maybe im trying to make it harder than it should be)… can 1 of u photoshop gurus hook me up with an explanation of how its done… thx in advance
Ensure that you have the background invisible, and that you can see the checkerboard placeholder behind your image
open the File > Save for Web prompt. In the top right area, enable gif transparency, and set the matte color to hex value # dcdcdc (this should be the background color of the forums)
Tada!
The problem is that GIFs don’t allow alpha/partial transparency. You can ‘fake’ a smooth-edged transparency by making a soft outline that ends in #D4D7DB (the forum BG color), similar to what Dreamstate suggested, but it’ll only look good on the SRK 09 skin - if anyone’s using any other skin, you’ll get a jagged grey outline instead.
PNGs will let you do true partial/smooth transparency that’ll work on any background, but the file format doesn’t support animation.
So you have to make a choice -
smooth edge transparency + animation + only works on SRK 09 skin (GIF)
OR
smooth edge transparency + no animation + works on all skins (PNG)
OR
no transparency/jagged transparency (just do a rectangular layout) + animation + works on all skins (GIF)
thx for the info guys…