Shadows and ID

By FomarThain Posted April 20, 2008 14:00:58

Hey guys,

I guess this borders on being ID related but I didn't know which other forum I should post to. Mods move it if it doesn't belong here. I made my first icon from an image I edited in PS for the game City of Heroes. Here is the PS image.

City of Heroes PS Image

Here is what happens when I try to save it as a gif file (before I even get it out of PS) to bring it over into ID.

City of Heroes with transparency

See how the shadow just turns black? Why is the transparency concerning the shadow not kept? It either turns solid black like that or solid white. I have seen icons that people have created that have shadows on them. I have tried all of the options in the preview the gif settings box and nothing seems to work. Since it is icon related and people make icons with ID I thought I would post it here.

To you icon makers out there, is there a trick to adding shadows with transparency?

Thanks.

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I don't know much about creating icons but I believe instead of saving as a gif save it as a png.

Thanks. Still black though not the ugly black that I got using the gif format. See how this guy did his with the shadow:

Word Icon

Thanks much for the reply.

GIF files cannot have alpha channel transparency which is what that shadow is. So the apps either chop any pixels with alpha < 255 or instead make it black where alpha is > 0.

That word icon will be a 32 bit image rather than 8 bit like GIFs are. You should save as a png and import that into ID as then you should get a 32 bit icon (24 bit colour + 8 bit alpha) assuming you ask ID to create icons in that format.

You should save as a png and import that into ID as then you should get a 32 bit icon (24 bit colour + 8 bit alpha) assuming you ask ID to create icons in that format.

Cool thanks Neil. I still have to work on it so it looks more clear and smooth but the shadow sure enough shows up.

CoH Icon with shadow