#1: Joe (i­nfra­pi­nkli­zza­rd) on Feb 8, 2023

Neither gifs or pngs with transparency show up as transparent. The png I tried ended up with a black bkgd (my current pic). The same pic saved as a transparent gif ended up with a green bkgd

Hm. I wrote the software to process all uploaded images through a package called ImageMagick in order to standardize the sizes, so if someone's camera takes, say, gigantic 300 megabyte photo images, this adjusts them to use less disk space and download faster. I'll need to check the package's settings to see if it can preserve image transparency while it processes images.

Thanks for trying out creating a profile, Joe. So far you and I are the only people who have tried it.

Oh! I know what it is: I coded the software to convert all image types to jpegs, along with the resizing, and jpegs don't have image transparency.

Hm. For easier handling I think I do want to convert all of the uploaded images to be in the same image format. Gif and png image formats can have transparent backgrounds. Gifs have few enough colors that some images won't look good in that format, especially photos. But pngs have transparency *and* can have lots of colors. Png images tend to take up more disk space than the same image in jpeg format, but to enable image transparency I think that might be worth it.

What do you think?

Joe - I converted the profile pictures from jpegs to pngs, and changed the code to use pngs for all of them. Transparency was lost on the existing images when they got converted to jpegs, but if you re-upload your lizard image it should hopefully maintain its background transparency.

(I need to go pick up a kid so I haven't tested this yet.)

Ok, I've tested it now. Even in png format, the image still loses its transparency. I'll do some more checking into it and report back here.

Also: How important is it to you to have a transparent background? The image is always going to be shown on a white background, so would it work for you to just upload a picture of a lizzard on a white background?

Hm. I looked at the file sizes, and all the converted png files were much bigger than the same image in jpeg format. So I'm going to go back to using jpeg format. I think it's going to be rare for anybody to want a transparent background, and if they do want that they can convert it to white and then upload it. Will that work okay for what you have in mind? Or am I missing something that needs addressing?

Go to next topic

You must register and log in to be able to participate in this discussion.