transparent background

[Mica]

Hi everyone. I want to say that I love this site...my Photoshop skills have gone from "nonexistant" to "able to make something that looks like more than random scribblings."

I do have a quick, silly question, though. I've been trying to make myself an avatar that I can upload to various forums and whatnot that is solely text. To do so, I tried just typing my text onto a transparent background. For some reason, though, the background doesn't stay transparent. It ends up turning to white whenever I upload it.

My question is: is there something that I can do about this? Basically I want the picture to be the text only, and nothing else. I'm not sure if it has something to do with the forums, or if I'm doing something wrong.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks much!

 

[Welles]

Mica,

How are you saving your little avatar image? It would have to be saved as a GIF and then have the white background mapped to transparency. That can be accomplished in the Save For Web... dialog. Check the Transparency box, highlight white in the palette of colors and click on the little transparency button at the bottom of the palette.

Here's a screen shot and the result.

 

[Mica]

Ooh, excellent. Thanks!