GIF help

Hi I have a file I would like to save in GIF format because of the transparency of course but it comes out looking really crappy. I will show you.



This is what it should look like...



(without the white)

Can anyone help with this?

I am using Photoshop CS2 Hence the reason I am posting in this category.

Ok I guess you cant post img's here but you can tell how cruddy it looks.

If it's going on a white background, the one attached should be ok. If it's not going on white, tell me the color and I'll fix it.

I could have removed a little more of the white, which you'll see if you put it on a non-white background, but I didn't want to introduce the jaggy edges that you got in your example gif. The problem is that to get smooth edges the color is dithered. To make a transparent background work you either have to accept the jaggies or dither out to your background color, or one that is really really close.

Ok... I understand the concept... I will deal with it. This is not for me, it is for one of my clients at www.extasysworkshop.com and I dont know what color the bg will be. I will make a deal with him to change it if needed. Thankyou for your advice.

ok here is the trick everyone will like, although u will have to do it for every modification of the bgcolor, but its preaty easy and usefull.

1) merge all layers, but background color
2) now in that layer select empty/transperant part with magic wand, what u really want to achieve is to have all those transitional pixels between main graphics and to the background be unselected/selected(depending what you are selecting, transperant part of layer or gfx part of that layer), or you can select the graphics part first and then reverse selection but first method is simpler and faster
3) now create new layer and fill that selection with some color that is not used with in main graphics, it could be very sharp light green
4) now just save for web, in gif menu where u see all colors that are used, select that green pixel, and make click on transperant button to make it transperant.

a simple fix for you, use the PNG file format - PNG saves transprancey

if everything is on a seperate layer, hide the background layer assuming that is the white background and nothing else. then go to file>save for web. Select a gif format and check 'transperancy'. Then under Matte choose white. And that should do the trick.

Just simply delete the background that photoshop automatically creates. When you do a save (try a 'save as' if the file is already created) as a .gif file, a couple of menus should pop up and one will be named "Indexed Color".
There should be a transpareny radio button you could click that will make the file transparent, otherwise a default background will be placed.