I want to change the buttons used in Lee Kropps ICF to be clear rather than opaque (like Dan Scarboro's buttons in his XP icf).

I have not problems in creating clear backgrounds on my PNG buttons but I'm having difficulty in keeping the background 100% clear but making the button semi transparent.

I'm using (or trying to use!) Paintshop Pro 9 or Photoshop 6 (or Elements 2).

Can somone please post an idiot guide for me (or a useful URL) as my heads getting bruised!!!

Thanks

I don't know if there's a better way, but the way I came up with was to do the whole thing in Photoshop with semi-transparent buttons, then flatten all layers and save the whole as a jpeg. This was used as the background, and then completely transparent buttons were placed over the background jpg in the appropriate places. Don't know if there's a more elegant solution to this one. I ended up not using semi-transparent in my icf, so never went any further with my attempts.

I use a program called XaraX (http://www.xara.com/) for doing my buttons at home ... allows you to export graphics as 24 bit PNG's with 8 bit alpha so you can basically do what the hell you like with transparency or opacity etc.

I find it pretty easy to use but maybe if you're into PhotoShop then it might be unintuitive (personally I can't find my way around PhotoShop) and take a while to get into but the best thing is that as a vector graphics program you can resize and rejig as much as you like and your exported graphic will always be as crisp as possible.

Phil

Thanks Guys.

I couldnt find a way to do it in Photoshop even though it's possible.

Goshdarnit - Could you post a quick idiots guide on what menu options I have to select to create 'clear buttons' . Thanks

All you do is create a button of the correct size in Photoshop (square) and make it one layer, totally transparent. Save it as a PNG and then load it in iProntoEdit. Bob's your uncle - an invisible button!

Thanks, couldn't get it to work right in Photoshop, took advice and loaded a trial of Xara X1, what a fantastic piece of software!!!!!!!!