DRAWING
Make pictures with transparent areas
If you use GWORLDS and Copybits, make the transparent area white; make your normal white(if you have it) "off white". This is how I put myself(in my white judo outfit) into Street Rumble and still be properly transparent. Then use the _transparent option of copybits. Viola; that's it.
I used GraphicConverter at the time to do all this. Also, it's a good idea to convert your picture to 256 colors. If someone only has a 256 color screen, sometimes the "off white" parts will turn transparent, and this is not a good idea.
Terence Jordan
If you're doing "DRAWPICTURE" or using FB's "PICTURE" statements, you need to set "white = transparent" in your editor _or_ simply don't copy the white areas to begin with (ie; use the "magic wand" to select a white area, then "select similar", then "invert selection" to get everything that's not white) when you paste the PICT into your resource file. Ideally, use either the System 16-color or the System 256-color palettes for your PICT; definitely no "thousands" or "millions" if you can avoid it, or you're asking for trouble (weird-looking results) on some systems.
If you're using COPYBITS, use _transparent to make the white areas transparent.
I use ColorIt! and Photoshop interchangeably, but if I were buying something just for programming, I'd definitely get ColorIt! from MicroFrontier. It's 1/10 the cost of Photoshop and does 99% of what you'd really _use_ in Photoshop, and is easier to learn. Photoshop has a true "transparent", but just "not selecting the white" in ColorIt! is easy and perhaps even more reliable. (Warning; your PICT resource will actually be a slight bit _bigger_ when you do this than if you did a "select all", because the "not copied" regions have to be "masked out".)
For images that use the System palette, just about anything will "force" any PICT to those colors; for photos that I have to get to 256 colors (but _not_ the System colors, since I want them to look realistic) I use Planet Color from LizardTech (I don't know if it's even still available; haven't seen anything about it recently) as it still does a _slightly_ better job of creating a custom or "adaptive" palette than even the latest Photoshop, although both Photoshop 4.0 and ColorIt! 3.2 are much better now than earlier versions.
Bill
well, for already-existing picts (or any pict on the clipboard), "vanishing cream"
-- a cheap ($10?) program by rustle laidman -- will turn any color in a pict into a transparent area. it's cool.
try <http://users.aol.com/raymeow> for rustle's site.
bowerbird