[NCLUG] OT: transparent jpg

[Matt Taggart]

dobbster writes...

> The GIMP rocks.

Yes it does. Here's the only serious picture I've done with it,

http://lackof.org/matt/christmas98/

I used "layers" for each animal so I could scale and move them around until I 
got it right. I also used the "select by similar color" tool to cut them out 
of the originals, and the "alpha blending" tool to smooth the rough edges.

[Nice tutorial snipped]

> (Questions: Is there a better way?  And given the copyright stuff, why
> does GIMP still support .gifs?)

If I understand it corrrectly it's only writing compressed GIFs that there's a 
patent on. Reading any GIF and writing uncompressed GIFs is ok. Since Debian 
has restrictions about accepting such patent encumbered stuff into the "main" 
section of their archive they provide two versions of the GIF library. One 
called libungif which goes into "main"(and lacks the "writing compressed" 
code) and one called libgif which goes into "non-free". Then apps that link 
against it also provide two version one in "main" one in "non-free". I don't 
know if other distros go to that much trouble.

-- 
Matt Taggart
matt at lackof.org