I want to extract a crest from a flag for application on another document, and while I know how to isolate the crest and turn it into a jpg, I can only do so by creating a rectangular image which means having a white background around the crest.

Would anyone on here be so kind as to tell me how I can make that white background transparent, or isolate the crest itself so it has no background?

post the image I dare ya 😉

A non-pro duffers guide on how to do this in Pixelmator (I assume other apps are similar):

Use the little wand tool to magically select the background. Invert your selection so the crest is selected.

Copy, paste to new image.

Would anyone on here be so kind as to tell me how I can make that white background transparent, or isolate the crest itself so it has no background?

Google till you get the crest by itself?

You can’t have transparency in a jpg. You can in a png.

You can do it in Photoshop fairly easily by selecting the bits you want using the lasso/pen tool and deleting the rest. You have to turn it into an adjustable layer first, rather than background, and you end up with a checkerboard effect around the bit you want, which basically means it is transparent. Then just save/export that, or even just copy paste it out into your doc.

If you don’t have photoshop I think you can download GIMP, which is similar but free.

Or you could post it up here for someone to do for you, and end up with a fourteen page thread of humorous Nazi gifs.

Is it from your own Coat of Arms?

Should be fairly simple if the background is all a uniform colour.

Not sure what the preferred free image editor is nowadays but I used to use GIMP. I can’t give you detailed instructions but there will be an option to select a region of colour to edit.

The option to adjust the transparency might be referred to as the alpha channel or alpha masking, but I think in GIMP you just need to select the area and delete it, and it will default to a transparent background.

I never got on with GIMP, Paint.NET is my go-to.  Not that I have any skillz whatsoever but it seemed a lot more intuitive to use.

Post something 🙂

If it’s all one colour and that colour is not used elsewhere the simplest method without installing gimp is to open it in PowerPoint, then there is a select transparent colour then you can right click on the image and save as …

there is also a frustrating select select background tool if you need to remove multiple colours.

flyingmonkeycorps

You can’t have transparency in a jpg.

can if you add a clipping path. but the program you are firing it into needs to beable to see the clipping path.

png most likely the easiest solution here without knowing the program its going into. but jpeg, png, gif, pdf, tiff. psd, ai, eps can all have transparent backgrounds. program dependent how they are recognised and displayed though.

select transparent colour then you can right click on the image and save as

Ah! This is something I had not realised…

png most likely the easiest solution here without knowing the program its going into. but jpeg, png, gif, pdf, tiff. psd, ai, eps can all have transparent backgrounds. program dependent how they are recognised and displayed though.

Way to over complicate things 😛

If the OP is even contemplating using JPEG then they obviously don’t give a crap about quality ergo PNG = thumbs up

just being helpful! 😆