GIF's with transparent background going black...

[DaveW]

Seems like I have been fighting product images for two days...

On this product:

http://www.worldchallengegear.com/SP...hirt_p_14.html

Is one of the photos showing up with a black background? It is here on IE8 and FF and IE7 on another computer.

I did the photo in Photoshop CS4. It doesn't show the black in PS or Windows Explorer, it only seems to happen on upload to 3d.

I tried changing the name and re uploading. I also deleted and re uploading. No change. I uploaded a whole directory of images and some of them randomly have this black background.

Any thoughts?

TIA,

DaveW

[DaveW]

ANother one: http://www.worldchallengegear.com/SP...llow_p_16.html

When I upload, they don't show the black on the preview it shows right after upload, but it does on the "list" of images.

Something to do with the cart resizing them? Is there a way to turn that off?

DaveW

[rrw]

Did you flatten the photo and save as a .jpeg file after masking the background? Make sure the save settings are set to white background instead of black. You might have already done that--just a thought :)

[DaveW]

THey are GIF's not JPG's.

Not sure if that is right, but it is my habit (and works fine on my other stores)

Thanks,

DaveW

[DaveW]

Dear 3dCart, I am getting very cranky about this...

I submitted a ticket. The original solution was to FTP the images instead of using file manager. I tried this and it did not make a difference.

Now the proposed solution is to stop using GIF's and switch to PNG's. Frankly this is not the end of the world, but it would be several hours of work to re-do all the images. I also do not know the current browser compatibility of PNG's compared to GIF? Are PNG's as univeral as GIF?

But, not using GIF's is a BS workaround. The cart is manipulating the images in some way becuase the EXACT SAME IMAGE will show with and without the black depending on where you look at it.

Support claims that they cannot be responsible for how a browser renders an image, which I understand. But, if it were a browser issue, why does the VERY SAME IMAGE show with and without the black?

If the images showed black on all views, I would assume a image creation problem, but they do not.

Another thought: If I right click and save as the image that shows black, it saves it as "thumbnail.jpg" Why is the cart converting from GIF to JPG?

And once again, all of the images were created at the same time with the same program. They were also uploaded at the same time.

So, why do some images show the black and others do not? Even with different views of the same product like on the sample shown above.

Please 3dcart support, stop wasting my and your time by treating everyone as an idiot. Read the information I have sent and try to get me a solution to this problem. A cart that can't properly display industry standard GIF's is going to be a problem for more than just me. :(

DaveW

[GonzaloGil]

You can use .gif files if you like, you just can't have the software resize them.
You can turn off the resize option by going to settings->store settings->Find the section that lets you specify image/thumbnail sizes and make them really large, ie 9999 by 9999 so in other words, the system will not try to resize the images for you.

The problem is that the image editor component we are using can not save in GIF format, this goes back to the fact that the creator of GIF format has made it so there is huge licensing costs to save in that format and so not very many components support saving in GIF.

We are going to make some changes on the coding to prevent this in the future, perhaps changing the component or forcing the software to never resize the image if its in .gif format.

For now, the work around given will work if you like to still use GIF.

PNG is supported on pretty much every browser right now and offers better options when it comes to transparency, but I wouldn't go and convert hundreds of images, you don't have to do that. If you do go that route, get one of those batch converters that can do a whole folder at once.

[DaveW]

Do I have re upload the images for this to work?

I just changed both thumbnail and image size to 999x999.

Thanks!

DaveW

[DaveW]

I just re loaded the images via FTP after switching the settings to 999x999 and there is no difference. They still display in black.

Thanks,

DaveW

[GonzaloGil]

Generally when you upload the .GIF file and it resizes it will rename it with a .jpg extension, and so you may have the GIF files in there still.

if that's not the case, then yeah you will need to re-upload the files, overwriting the files already there.

Question, when you go to the image directly ie.
http://www.yourdomain.com/assets/images/image.gif

does it look ok? is it only showing with the black background on the website? You may have the listing template that resizes images on the fly and that's why its happening, if that's the case, there is simpler solution, i can remove that from that listing template for you and all images will be ok without needing to re-upload.

[DaveW]

GG,

It displays correctly when I go directly to the image.

I also re uploaded one product with PNG files.

https://worldchallengegear.3dcartsto...ow_p_1-16.html

It is still randomly displaying the black. ALso, the batch upload script does not support PNG files.

So, it would seem the problem is either the template as you suggested, or something in the creation of the images in Photoshop.

If you can turn off the resize in the template, that would be great.

Thanks,

DaveW

[Mark]

Just an FYI, We use Photoshop Elements, and when we save image for our webstore, we use the "Save for Web" option. When using this option, you cannot have a transparent background. It will save with white background. This is fine as long as your store template background is white or your images don't overlap.

[DaveW]

I am using Photoshop CS4 and I can keep the transparency (and have been).

For the apparel stuff, I really like having a transparent background. THat way, if I change the template/skin later I don't have to redo all the photos to ditch the white background. :)

I guess I will do future pictures in PNG, but it doesn't seem to make any difference with this particular problem.

Thanks,

DaveW

[Mark]

You can also try the "image gallery" feature.
We didn't like the thumbnails on the side of the main image on the template, so, instead of the additional images on the side of main image on listing page, we used image gallery for the additional pictures, which uses a button to launch the additional images in a galley. Maybe that might work differenlty?

[rrw]

Wow--I didn't even realize we could save the transparency--I thought when they were uploaded to our site they were automatically flattened. Good to know! :)