Heraldry - Generating a transparent layer

Interested in submitting your heraldry, but don't know how to remove a static background color surrounding the icon or other imagery you are looking to submit?

Here are a couple of great options that remove surrounding static colors to create a transparent layer.

This one doesn't require a download, but can be limited in how well it carves out the transparent surroundings:
https://www168.lunapic.com/editor/?action=transparent

Paint.net and Gimp are free downloadble programs. They are basic (especially Paint.net), but works well for this purpose. Use the 'Magic Wand' tool and experiment with the 'tolerance' to get the background removed:
https://www.getpaint.net/index.html and https://www.gimp.org/

If you have a free tool that's better than the above, please feel free to suggest!

 

Recently used the free paint.net program. Was very easy to do following this guide.

https://www.techjunkie.com/image-background-to-transparent-paint-net/amp/

 

GiMP is what I use...

There are a lot of good tutorial on YouTube ... specifically for Transparancy, you can search for "setting transparency in gimp"

GiMP will save files to a .xcf format... You'll want to Export your image to a .png format before you submit it. PNG is the default format for the Export function in GiMP, so it's very simple to do (File => Export). PNG is supported by Portalarium for Heraldry Submission... XCF is not.

 

Being a Linux user, GIMP is pretty much the only choice. Damn good one though.

 

I did not know that you could do this, so when I submitted my crest, that was done for me many years ago by the COA on both my accounts, thought that when submitted it would be up to spec, when I then got my heraldry patterns was a little annoyed that the white background was on both of them, now I find that it can be removed, which I have now done, I'm more than a little annoyed that this was not explained before, as I'd have waited until the background had been removed on both my account crests, now I'll have to pay $50 to have them updated grrrr

 

I got the transparency right but the rest looks like garbage. The banners are too light for my heraldry to show. I'll have to redo my heraldry upload and try again when I can shell out for a redo.

 

I forgot about my Heraldry Unlock Voucher awesome thank you Lord Dark Starr

 

I was recommended to use 'inkscape' took a while to learn it but managed it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkscape