Topic awaiting preservation: Trying to understand Doc's Dither Transparency Tut

I don't understand the tutorial. I'm sorry. I'm trying to follow this tutorial: http://www.handson.nu/HTML/dither.shtml

I'm lost from the start! I don't get this:

quote:

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A couple of things to be careful of, first off,make sure you don't over-write your background tile, simply close it and select "Don't Save"! This technique works best with sharp-edged shadows, with a blur of 2 pixels or less, (this example is done at 8 pixels to exagerate the point.) Either way you go, this method is the first step to for all the other ones, it's from this file that we get our transparency mask

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At this point, I've managed to save my image with transparency and matte color is average of the tile. The above is suggesting something to do with a drop-shadow. Am I suppose to create a drop-shadow first?

Then:

quote:

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Open that gif file you just saved, with the dropshadow selected from that average color

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I never had a drop-shadow to begin with And what average color? The 2x or 8x average color? I didn't understand when to create that.

So this is where I am stuck. Please help.

Karl


See Guitar Buttons on this page: http://www.arizonasunrays.com/meets/2005HardRock/



[This message has been edited by Karl (edited 04-09-2004).]

That tut is specifically for dithering a drop shadow on a high-contrast background. As you said, your buttons don't have drop shadows... I'm not sure what or why you are trying to dither.

Are you planning on using those buttons against a high-contrast background (something I really wouldn't recommend in the first place)? I would think that if you just saved it with transparency, using a matte color that approximates the background, you'd be fine. Alternatively, if this was for posting on the Aslyum (or another board that uses alternating background colors), you would just use the average of the two background colors as the matte.

I think it would probably help if we knew what you wanted to do with these buttons...


___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org

The buttons are intendid for this page, in that approximate location over that random background color. What is out there now is with a matte of the guazion blur at 32 as the background for the matte. It does look ok, but I think it could look better!

Karl
(thanks for the clarification on that tut)

Ah, OK.

Honestly, I don't think I'd bother with dithering on that. What I would do is position the images so I know exactly where they are going to be on the pic. Then I would have the background pic on one layer and the button on another. Do a zero tolerance magic wand selection outside of the button (on the button layer), then merge the background and button layers and hit delete (you could also inverse the selection and then copy and paste the button into a new image, too).

Then, rather than having a "nav" div, I would position each graphic separately so it lines up with the background. I mean, you've basically just got one huge graphic there anyway, so why not. Not the way I would design a website, but I'm guessing you don't have much choice in the matter...

Hopefully my PS explanation up there makes sense. I know exactly what I'm talking about, but I'm not sure if I'm conveying it properly.

[Edit: And having said that, you're right--it does look OK. I think it could look better if you used the technique above, but if you don't want to go that route, though, you could stick with what you have.]

[This message has been edited by Suho1004 (edited 04-09-2004).]

I think we are there! Tell me what you think.
(thanks!)

Looks great.