request to convert image to png

[james438]

Thanks for posting the graphics editors that you use jscheuer1. I recently downloaded The Gimp and am playing around with it.

[jscheuer1]

I don't see it as any real variation. It's just the way the scale is represented. Remember it's a double edged scale. As resolution increases, compression decreases. So it's just a matter of which (resolution or compression) is represented by the number. Unless you mean some with 1 - 99, others with 1 - 100. I think that might be indicative of one or both of:

1. 99% is the highest quality you can expect form JPEG which is never 100% lossless. Programs that include 100% are lying to you.
   
   
2. In the JPEG format the scale is divisible into any reasonable number of equal and/or unequal increments.

Unless james438 uploads the original image to a server and gives us a link to it there, we cannot be 100% sure we are seeing the original.

I suspect though that the minor artifacts in the image are due to how it was first created, rather than conversion to JPEG. But that's only a suspicion. I could easily be wrong about that.

[djr33]

He did link to the original, and I've compared them both-- there's nothing to worry about in this case (even though that's not usually true).

[james438]

<?php
 $im = imagecreatetruecolor(330, 400);
 $bg = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 5);
 $black = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0);
 imagefill($im, 0, 0, 5);
 $text='Q';
 $font = 'include/fonts/tt9832l.ttf';
 imagettftext($im, 300, 0, 10, 320, $black, $font, $text);
 imagecolortransparent($im, $bg);
 header('Content-type: image/png');
 imagepng($im);
 imagedestroy($im);
 ?>

The above is kinda cool because it takes a character of a particular letter of a given .ttf font file and outputs it as an image with a transparent background using php's GD library.

You can see a larger version of the image of the letter Q here. Actually, the image in the first post was the bold version. I am still working out how to do that.

Line 2: $im = imagecreatetruecolor(330, 400);
//changes the size of the box.

Line 8: imagettftext($im, 300, 0, 10, 320, $black, $font, $text);
//300 is the font size. 10 is the offset from the leftmost side of the box. 320 is the baseline of the font, not the bottommost location of the letter.

If you are curious the font I posted above is holiday pi regular. You can also download it legally for free here. I believe it also comes bundled with various microsoft products like Microsoft Office or Microsoft Publisher so you may want to check around first before buying.

[bernie1227]

I thought the point of fonts was being able to read them

[james438]

To create a bold version of the letter you just draw the image 9 times in each of the 9 quadrants. The 8 quadrants that are not the center one are off center by 2px depending on the size of the image and the level of boldness you are going for.

bernie1227, I think fonts like the one I am working with are designed to store icons of a particular theme like Halloween or hand signals.

[jcvintner]

I want to convert this image into png format with a black cross with a transparent background. I'm hoping someone might be interested. I don't have the means or know how to do this.

In Photoshop you can import this image, and since you currently have highly contrasting content, it makes it really easy to use layer blending. Export to PNG 24 with transparency and negate the matting (unless you'd like to blend it more with the background using a mat color). I brought the blending to 184 on the Gray channel for this example to maintain the smooth edges, hope it helps. A smudge of gray remains for smoothness otherwise the image starts losing its edge.

[djr33]

That can approximate it, but the best results are by using the image itself as an alpha channel. That's what I did for the image in the first reply in this thread.

[jcvintner]

Except through the Alpha, in your example, we end up with artifacts beyond the edge lines of the image, which you can see by applying a dark backdrop. One way to check this is to add a contrasting stroke to your edge if you'd prefer not to add a dark test layer.

[djr33]

Well, inspecting the images closer reveals that there's a white boundary around both of ours. The best solution is to use the image as an alpha channel with the entire image as black. What I did on the first replace resulted in partially transparent grays, to the blackness degree of those grays. What you did was similar, just with a different method.

However, after all of this, I've looked at James's first post again and I'm confused: the new PNG (from the edit) actually is already on a transparent background. James, is there anything more that should be done from that?