.GIF transparency - help needed

I created the above logo using Illustrator, and pasted the vector artwork onto a transparent background in Photoshop.

I then exported the transparency and saved as a .GIF, but it appears pixelated (as shown above).

Can anyone help me to smoothen those edges? I .PNG isn't an option. Needs to be .GIF, but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

 

Thanks for the advice, and offering your help. Much appreciated. I'll see how I get on with a few different settings.

 

messing with the 256 colors probably won't help since it's only white.
but why not try putting that gray background in the photoshop file and saving the whole thing? that way you don't even have to use transparency.

 

You could always use a PNG.

 

i bet on that png quality is much better then gif for sure.

 

The only way to get an anti-aliasing effect is with png, so you can have half-transparent pixels on the edges.

I suppose, since you're starting with a vector, make it much larger when changing to raster. It won't eliminate the jaggies but it can help.

I don't know that dithering will do anything, but possibly setting the dpi higher than "web" (72) might help.

Why can it not be a png? The compression should be better than gif, and if it's IE that's a problem, there are ways around that.

 

PNG quality is much better than GIF, though not supported fully by all browsers without workarounds.

GIFs will always give you the dithering when making them transparent, so if you are looking for something totally transparent, you have to go with a PNG-24.

Or you could create a JPEG with that background in the back, and just make the logo "look" transparent, though if you want to use it in other places as a transparent logo, it won't look right.

Unfortunately, this is one of GIF's shortcomings. Great compression for under 256 colors and for solid backgrounds, not so great with transparencies on multi-colored backgrounds.

 

Only browser I know of that won't support it is IE6.

FF, IE7, Safari, and Opera all support PNG transparency.

Stop supporting IE6, and maybe it will die faster.

 

As much as I don't like IE, to stop supporting it is alienating a large amount of your readers, which isn't a good idea. I know what you're saying, and why, but don't agree with it.

Thanks everyone for the tips.

One friend of mine has suggested using matte for the .gif, and setting the matte colour to the same as the background colour.

 

My highest traffic website gets over 55,000 unique visitors a month, the stats are:

Firefox:82%
IE7:10%
IE6:3%
Opera, Safari, Kamino, Netscape, and all others:5%

IE7 supports PNG images fine, IE6 doesn't. Kill IE6, support IE7.

 

There is a fix for IE6. Just google transparent png IE6.

A matte will work, so long as the background colour is never changed, otherwise you'll get the ghost shadow outline (bits of the matte showing up) on gif. If the background never lightens, no-one will ever see it : )

 

This past month I've had 53,000 absolute unique visitors to my site. 34% of those visits are through Internet Explorer, with 53% of those being with IE6.

That's almost 10k visits, so I'm not prepared to rule those people out.

 

Yeah, in most of the sites I do, the percentage of IE6 visitors is usually between 60-80%