Can a symbol be made transparent?

mapleleaver

I have a question about changing some Chinese characters into a copyright symbol. I know how to made a copyright symbol with a name that is typed, but this symbol is from a stamp and my friend would like to use it to copyright his images so it needs to be transparent and obviously cannot be typed.

Does anyone know if this is possible and how? :scratch

Thank you

Christina

RogersDA

mapleleaver wrote:

I have a question about changing some Chinese characters into a copyright symbol. I know how to made a copyright symbol with a name that is typed, but this symbol is from a stamp and my friend would like to use it to copyright his images so it needs to be transparent and obviously cannot be typed.

Does anyone know if this is possible and how?

Thank you

Christina

If you can open the image in an application such as Photoshop you can use Select - Color Range - and choose the background area (white, perhaps?), and adjust the fuzziness slider until you have just the remaining Chinese character that is not selected. You can then use the New Layer via Cut on that selected color, and then hide that layer. the result --should-- be the remaining Chinese character as a separate layer that you can resize, convert to a brush, etc.

digismile

This is pretty straight forward. You will need to first scan the character and take it into an advanced photo editor, such as photoshop. You will then need to delete any extraneous background so that you have just the scanned character and a totally blank background.

You can basically follow this tutorial, except that you won't use the type tool to type the copyright info. The scanned image is the equivalent portion of this process.

mapleleaver

digismile wrote:

This is pretty straight forward. You will need to first scan the character and take it into an advanced photo editor, such as photoshop. You will then need to delete any extraneous background so that you have just the scanned character and a totally blank background.

You can basically follow this tutorial, except that you won't use the type tool to type the copyright info. The scanned image is the equivalent portion of this process.

Thank you both of you. I'll let you how it goes once I have a chance to try it again. I have started to erase and background. It's hard to get a hard line at the edge. I took a picture of the image, rather than scanning it. I tried scanning it, but the picture has better resolution as the symbols are small.

Thank again
Christina

digismile

mapleleaver wrote:

Thank you both of you. I'll let you how it goes once I have a chance to try it again. I have started to erase and background. It's hard to get a hard line at the edge. I took a picture of the image, rather than scanning it. I tried scanning it, but the picture has better resolution as the symbols are small.

Thank again
Christina

Getting a hard/smooth edge may be difficult if the image is tiny. You might need to make it into a vector drawing, by using the pen tool to trace it (it keeps the lines and curves perfectily smooth. No jagged edges).

The pen tool is one of those frustrating tools to learn, but will pay huge dividends for masking, tracing, etc. The resulting path can then be "selected" and filled with a color. It's also a bit easier to do with a tablet, although I used a mouse for years.

BTW, how small is small?

The other option is to clean up your image as best you can, mak it a "selection" (Ctrl-click on the small layer thumbnail in Photoshop), and turn the selection into a path. You will now have a path with several anchors (a continuous line with a bunch of movable points) that be be deleted, moved, added or modified to smooth out the lines.

I don't know what your photoshop skills are or whether you are even using photoshop, but I think this is one of the only ways to get the quality you are looking for (unless you can a better/larger original starting image. If you post an image to give us all an idea of what your working with, maybe it will spark another idea or two ...

vegasphotog

It would help to know what software you have...personally I would either create the file in Illustrator or create a blank transparent canvas in Photoshop, create your symbol, rasterize the type, save as a png file.

mapleleaver

vegasphotog wrote:

It would help to know what software you have...personally I would either create the file in Illustrator or create a blank transparent canvas in Photoshop, create your symbol, rasterize the type, save as a png file.

Thanks for all of your help. I have CS2 an CS3. I don't know how to use Illustrator but am comfortable with Photoshop. I am attaching what I have. I was able to make the background transparent as a Photoshop file but as soon as I change it to a jpeg it gets filled in. I have locked the transparent pixels, so it isn't that. I also tried moving it to a blank file with no success. Why is it filling in and what can I do to fix this?

Christina

vegasphotog

.jpg compression flattens your file. Save as a PNG.

mapleleaver

vegasphotog wrote:

.jpg compression flattens your file. Save as a PNG.

Okay, I can do that but will my friend be able to open a PNG file?

Chrsitina

i_worship_the_King

They should be, as all modern browsers and systems recognize .png. However you could always go with .gif and save with transparency in it's palette.


However it seems like there should be a Unicode pattern to this symbol that you could easily find in a Chinese font pack. Have you tried google?

mapleleaver

i_worship_the_King wrote:

They should be, as all modern browsers and systems recognize .png. However you could always go with .gif and save with transparency in it's palette.


However it seems like there should be a Unicode pattern to this symbol that you could easily find in a Chinese font pack. Have you tried google?

No I haven't. I wondered how the anyone wrote in Chinese symbols on a keyboard. So there is a way. I'll try that as well.

CM

i_worship_the_King

Try this:


http://www.khngai.com/chinese/charmap/tbluni.php?page=0

And copy and paste the symbol into
http://www.khngai.com/chinese/tools/bitmapgen.php

for a nice bitmap of it.

vegasphotog

mapleleaver wrote:

Okay, I can do that but will my friend be able to open a PNG file?

Chrsitina

Is your friend a smuggie with watermark capabilities? Or, does he have photoshop? Because after you create the png you can convert into a brush or a pattern and adjust your opacity. Of course after you rasterize the font character.

RogersDA

mapleleaver wrote:

Thanks for all of your help. I have CS2 an CS3. I don't know how to use Illustrator but am comfortable with Photoshop. I am attaching what I have. I was able to make the background transparent as a Photoshop file but as soon as I change it to a jpeg it gets filled in. I have locked the transparent pixels, so it isn't that. I also tried moving it to a blank file with no success. Why is it filling in and what can I do to fix this?

Christina

Jpg does not support transparency. You will need to maintain the image as a photoshop file (psd), save for web as a transparent png file (better than a gif), or use photoshop to convert the image to a brush shape. Doing the last step is great as you can use the brush tool to "stamp" the image anywhere and change its size. The brush will loose the red, but you can use the color palette to change the brush color before you "stamp" the image. Remember to apply the stamp to a separate layer in photoshop in case you want to get rid of it later and so that you don't destroy the original layer.

mapleleaver

i_worship_the_King wrote:

They should be, as all modern browsers and systems recognize .png. However you could always go with .gif and save with transparency in it's palette.


However it seems like there should be a Unicode pattern to this symbol that you could easily find in a Chinese font pack. Have you tried google?

My friend wanted the symbol taken from the stamp that was made for him. He now has Photoshop so that works. He uses it as a PSD file. and be doesn't want smooth edges either because it's supposed to look like an actual stamp. thanks again for all of your help.

Christina

www.chrismcwilliamsphotography.com