1. Removing White Backgrounds Using Adobe Fireworks

2. WHAT TO DO? Suppose we have this great picture of an Ant that we found in Google images, and saved into our own folder as a.jpg file. We now want to use this fabulous looking ant in an animation project.

3. WE HAVE A PROBLEM Our Ant has a white background surrounding him. We want to remove this white background so that we only have our ant present. We can do this using Adobe CS3 Fireworks.

5. HOW TO REMOVE THE WHITE BACKGROUND Open the actual ant original start.jpg file We now need to set up Fireworks, so that it is running with a Transparent background. To change Fireworks to have a transparent (or see through clear) Canvas, we have to go to the top of the screen and do Modify > Canvas > Canvas Color Once you have done this you MUST make sure that you have the TRANSPARENT selected

6. HOW TO REMOVE THE WHITE BACKGROUND We now need to use the “magic wand” tool, to select all of the white background and clear it away. Now move the mouse over onto the white area, and the magic wand symbol should appear. Click the left mouse button and flashing dashed lines should appear. Now at the top of the screen, click on Edit > Clear We now remove the dashed lines selection by either pressing the Esc key on our keyboard, or by going Select > Deselect

7. HOW TO SAVE THE FILE File > Save As and save the Ant as a.PNG Fireworks file, (or we can also use a.GIF file). We must use either of these two file types, for our Ant to keep his transparent background. If we resave him as a.jpg file, we will have the white background come back again. This is because.jpg images are not able to ever have clear backgrounds.