yeah it does definitely cause havoc, I have more problems with .gif files than .png these days though lol, it's probably just how my image editors are looking at them or something, but they sure don't "look" transparent to me except when they are on the page, when I open them they aren't transparent, very weird images lol.

When I want to make an image look "faded" for a background I put a white layer over the top (in an image editing program) and fiddle with the transparency of the overlay until I get the desired effect.

You have at least three options:

1) Use an image editor to create a 32bit png with alpha transparency, which can work in IE6 if you add the proper code to the style sheet, and if the image itself doesn't need to repeat either vertically or horizontally. Otherwise, it just looks ugly in IE6.

2) Use an image editor to create a third image which combines the faded foreground image with the portion of the background image it overlaps, and then lining up that image on the page so you can't tell were the background ends and the image begins.

3) Use css to make the image display with transparency. IE uses its proprietary alpha filter while other browsers support the opacity styling. This method works if the transparency is consistent across the image, but not if the image needs to appear more solid at one corner/edge than another.

CSS opacity.

So there are two new things I need to learn, now. Most cool.

I haven't really got to grips with CSS and "alpha channels" and the like (I think I'm getting too old to learn fancy new stuff) so I tend to use unweildy solutions which a professional would laugh at.

I use CorelDRAW 12 a lot and because I love playing around with vector graphics in preference to bitmaps, I hit on the idea of importing bitmats into CDR12 to manipilate them.

To fade a bitmap I overlay it with a transparent panel and play around with the colour & transparency values until I get the effect I like, then export the lot back into bitmap form.
This has an advantage in that I can highlight a certain object in the original image by making a "cut-out" in the panel shaped like the object's outline so that the object is not affected by the overlay - I can keep the object in it's original brightness etc while fading the background around it.

I got frustrated trying to crop away unwanted background in a tidy fashion using CDR 12's bitmap-based software, so what I do now is draw a thin vector line around the image and use the resulting closed figure as a "container" to display the image without unwanted background.
I used this technique on the photo of a girl ripping up an L-plate on my front page at http://www.drivingnt.com

When I want to arrange several bitmaps into a collage I trim them into various shapes using the vector "container" mrthos I mentioned above and combine them in a vector file, then export it in bitmap form.

It works for me but my aspirations (and web pages) are simple.

Help!!! Does anyone know how to do a translucent overlay to sit on top of a jpeg image, so the jpeg will show through underneath the overlay? Trying to do a homepage banner bar just like the one at this website.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/index

Notice how the image of the presidential seal is visible underneath the banner bar. I'm setting up a slideshow for my homepage, but I want the images to be showing through underneath the translucent banner bar. Any recommendations would be great.

If someone out there feels like being a good samaritan, they could make a blue-ish colored overlay and a gray colored overlay just lke the ones at the site pasted above, and email the file to me at james.lee.mich@gmail.com. If I could take a file and paste it onto my coffeecup homepage I'm trying to build, I would be eternally grateful.

I'm a sales person, trying to masquerade as a web designer, and it's obvious why I shouldn't quit my day job.

Thanks.

Do you want it to be a navigation bar? The opaque navigation bar on the example page is being done with CSS. If you just want a image to be opaque using html make the image and paste this code into the body of your page.