Ship creation- help needed!

[Speculator]

Thanks in advance for any help.

*NOTE* I will be using this thread to ask multiple questions, so if you can, please check (whenever you can) and see if there is a new post and help, thank you!

I have designed a basic ship that will be my first. I am following the tutorial by Darkfrost and using his ship editor, FTLEdit, to create my ship.
But after design a ship in GIMP, saving it, and then bringing it into FTLEdit, the ship has a white rectangle around it. How do I remove this box? Is it from GIMP or did I skip a step by accident?
Any advice is welcome.

[TheNewbie]

Try using PAINT.net . Gimp might not have transparent backround.

[DryEagle]

I also recommend paint.net - gimp is ok if you're on linux and don't have other options, but personally I've always found it very clunky to use.

[speedoflight]

Try using PAINT.net . Gimp might not have transparent backround.

LOL??

Gimp has almost the same potential as photoshop, paint.net has really inferior capabilities than gimp or almost any other image editing program.

Maybe u are not saving the image with the alpha channel, so the alpha channel is replaced by white. When u save the png in gimp, make sure u check the transparency option.

Anyways, i dont use gimp/photoshop for design, its too tedious and the results are really bad (for the time it takes to paint a ship).

Even i will recommend any pixel editing program instead of paint.net, like iconworkshop (the program that i use to make weapons) or any other else. I use sketchup to make the ships, but since people are too lazy, i dont think u will learn sketch up only for modding for FTL lol. Anyways, gimp, photoshop, paint.net, etc is not a good choice to make ships, since the tools are not designed for pixelated-small graphics like the ones are used on FTL. I mean, u can make ships, but the look will not be really satisfactory and u will waste more time than the needed.

[5thHorseman]

If transparency is your problem, then in Gimp load your image. In the menus go layer->Transparency->Add Alpha Channel. If it's grayed out then transparency is possible already.

Then use the Fuzzy Select Tool (that looks like a magic wand) and click and hold in your white area around the ship. Drag left and right until it's selected all the white and none of the ship (this may be impossible, just do your best) and hit the DELete key. This will give you most of the transparency you need.

Then, select the Eraser tool and go around your ship, getting rid of any other white bits that the previous tool missed. Save it as a PNG and you're all good.

Look into layers, they are quite powerful. But to fix this problem, just doing the above should be fine.

[speedoflight]

Yeah, but we dont know if the issue is that he is not getting ride of the background or he is not saving the image with transparency.. anyways, transparency is essential modding for these games..

[5thHorseman]

Yeah, but we dont know if the issue is that he is not getting ride of the background or he is not saving the image with transparency.. anyways, transparency is essential modding for these games..

Adding the alpha channel will give the image transparency. Erasing the white will then make that part transparent.

[Metzelmax]

As said before go to layer->transparency-> add alpha; then erase the white part.

To avoid such problems in future, everytime you create a new image click on >advanced options there it opens up the option how to fill the pic. There select transparent and the image is created with an alpha channel.
Gimp defaults to "background color" which is annoying.

Gimp is awesome btw and can do nearly everything that photoshop can too. I would never use paint.net even if threatened with a gun.

[TheNewbie]

From what I have seen so far ,paint.net is surperior to other programs ,at least for "making" ship and weaponry. I have used photoshop and gimp but both had disappointing results.

[Speculator]

Thank you for all of the responses!

I have now made the background transparent with your help.
I will still continue to use GIMP unless I find that Paint.net (or any other program) offers a better toolset for my ships.