[alex_crowther]

Can someone suggest a editor that can save/export 4bit png's with the single colour transparency colour replacement.

Infact, can someone post instructions on howto create and save one of these images in said editor as well.

I currently have a test 4bit png with transparency, but whenever I load/save it in photoshop 7 it becomes 8bit and loses the transparency, and debabelizerpro is saving to 4bit but striping transparency info.

Alex

[shmoove]

In Paint Shop Pro 7 you go to Colors->Set Transparency and then you get a couple of dialogs. Press OK on the first one. If the image is palletized (like a 4 bit image will be), then you can select one of the colors from the pallete as the transparent color, either by entering it's pallete index or just click the color on the image.

shmoove

[alex_crowther]

Not an insult incase you were wandering :)

Just found out that GIMP (the unix/linux image editor, now with windows ports in the form of gimp-2.0.1-setup.exe and the required gtk+-2.2.4-20040124-setup.exe) supports png completely.

Once you have installed gtk+ and then gimp, load your image:

image -> mode -> indexed ..

Choose Generate Optimum Palette: max Number of Colours: 16 for 4bit with transparency (or 2 for black and white with transparency)

Choose any difhering.

Enable Dithering of Transparency (you must do this or the alpha is lost and not converted to a transparency palette colour)

Click ok, and save.

Also if you are using photoshop, just load and save your 8bit images (ones without transparency) and gimp will make you a smaller png for 8bit too.

All good stuff !!!