avox wrote: > AFAIK PDF has supported hard masks for images from the beginning > (that's also possible in PostScript using the imagemask > operator). > What is only possible since 1.4 is softmasks (alpha channel), > since those require blending imagepixels with background pixels. > > I don't know if the behaviour for images with an alpha > channel which contains only 0% and 100% values is defined, > better not rely on that. Using an indexed palette with a > special color for 'transparent' should work.
Thanks, Andreas, now I'm hoping for transparent light at the end of the tunnel. What I found with 1.3.3.9 is that my png with a hard mask seemed to be respected even exporting to PDF 1.3 ... which from my naive perspective looks like good behaviour by Scribus. For the time being, I'll export to PDF 1.4 to be on the safe side, but I'd like to avoid painting myself into a corner by creating obstacles to moving to PDF/X-3. When I open my png in GIMP, and open the palette editor, the way to create a transparent colour is not clear (if you'll excuse a horrible pun) so I'm wondering whether it might be more appropriate to use Inkscape, or something else, and then avoid opening the image in GIMP? Where might I (and others) find an explanation of how to get transparent colours into a palette? Thanks! John (MacPhail)
