[OS X TeX] White vs. Transparent?

[Maarten Sneep]

On 27 Mar 2006, at 2:14, david craig wrote:

>
>> On a related note, how come the transparent background doesn't get  
>> preserved when importing LaTeXit's PDFs to Powerpoint?
>
> Again following up on what/how transparency is in a pdf,  
> GraphicConverter [e.g.] won't let you save a pdf with a transparent  
> color.  However transparency in a pdf is achieved, GC doesn't know  
> about it.

GC turns the pdf into a bitmap, and uses white as its background  
color. In general: don't use GC to handle PDF files, as they can only  
come out as bitmaps. The other trick, which can be scripted:

- create normal black on white pdf snippets.
- open in GC
- copy the image
- add an alpha channel
- paste the image into the alpha channel
- invert the colours (of the normal image, not hte alpha channel).
- save as png (scaled down with anti-aliassing, if needed).

Maarten
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