Here I will be discussing IrfanView version 3.98 which is free
and can be downloaded here:
http://www.irfanview.com/ or here:
download.com. (Note: Be careful, during installation it
tries to install Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer and Google
Desktop Search. Be sure to uncheck these during installation).
IrfanView is a powerful program for viewing and slightly
editing some graphic images.
Pros:
Small in size. Only 884kb.
Screen Capture with mouse cursor in the capture area
Many graphic formats supported including transparent
background for GIF and PNG.
Saves to GIF and PNG without degrading the colors unlike
MS Paint.
Crop, resize, rotate, and zoom functions.
Add background transparency to GIFs and PNGs.
Has JPG optimization features when saving.
Cons
Tries to install Google Toolbar and Google Desktop Search
during installation.
No painting tools such as line drawing, paint fill, etc.
2.
Now we will open up IrfanView and paste the screen capture into
the program (Edit -> Paste).
To crop the image simply click at one corner of the icon and
drag to another corner of the icon drawing a box around the icon.
Don't worry if your box isn't even around the icon. You can
resize the box by clicking on an edge and dragging it.
Now the image looks like this:
As you can
see I missed a few of the blue dots because I got lazy. So I will
have to go back into Ms Paint and get them again.
Click on the plus to see the fast way to make the background
all one color using Ultimate Paint.
[+]
Click here to read about Ultimate
Paint or to download it. You can also download it here:
http://www.ultimatepaint.com/download.php.
Make sure you scroll to the bottom of the page and download
Ultimate Paint Standard 2.88 LE (Freeware Edition).
To see the instructions for making a GIF with a transparent
background in Ultimate Paint
Click here.
Or click on the plus to see the way to make the background
all one color using IrfanView and saving as PNG.
[+]
4.
Load the image in IrfanView by clicking on File ->
Open.
(Problem: IE 6 and below will not show the PNG transparent
colors as transparent unless you change the color depth of the
PNG image to 256 colors (8-bit) instead of 24-bit colors. To do
this click on Image -> Decrease Color Depth....
Then select 256 colors and I suggest unchecking Use
Floyd-Steinberg dithering.
Now to save the image with a transparent background
and as PNG click on File -> Save as... and select
PNG in Save as type:. Over on the right you will
see some options. Under PNG: check Save Transparent
Color. Type is a filename such as liveicon and click
on Save. Again Irfanview will show you a zoomed in image
of the icon and you can click on the dark blue background to
set it as transparent.
Now the image looks like this:
Ok, so it didn't do a great job with this image. But I guess
we can take it into Ms Paint and clean it
up and remember to save it as png and then load it in IrfanView
again, remember to decrease the color depth to 256 colors (8-bit)
and then save it as transparent PNG again..
That wasn't too bad this time. Didn't take too long to clean it
up and it looks like this now:
and click
on the color blue that you see the most of in the background so
that we will be painting with that color. Now select the "Fill
with Color" tool
. Now start clicking
on all the other colors of blue on the background so that you
will be making it all one color. Be careful not to click on any
of the colors in the icon itself, however if you do you can always
click on Edit -> Undo. This is a slow time-consuming
process, but it is free. Now that you have the background all one
color you can save the image. Click on File -> Save as....
Ms Paint likes to save the extension with uppercase letters (GIF)
so I like to type in the whole file name like: liveicon.gif
so that file extension will be lowercase (gif).
As you can
see I missed a few of the blue dots because I got lazy. So I will
have to go back into Ms Paint and get them again.
Oops. We forgot to decrease the color depth to 256 colors and
it is still too big. So now I will shrink it to a width of 22 and
decrease the color depth to 256 colors:
