Transparency in 1-bit-per-pixel image

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Schrijvertje

I don't know wether it's taboo to mention QuarkXpress on this forum, but I used to use Quark 4 a lot, and in particular one feature: making the "background" of a 1-bit-per-pixel image transparent.
After placing the image in a Quark-document, usually a TIFF, I could go to the image properties and only needed to change te color of the white bits to "none".

My question: does Scribus have such a feature?
Because using these simple TIFF's (without paths or alpha channels) is so much more convenient to me than using paths or PNG's with real added transparency.

I'm using Scribus 1.4.4

GarryP

Schrijvertje, unfortunately Scribus currently can't effect transparency on an image.

You need to add transparency to the image before using it in Scribus.

I've no idea whether this will change in future releases but I don't think it will be a priority. I'd be happy to be proved wrong though!

P.S. I even tried - on a very long shot - experimenting with the Duotone effect setting one of the shades to 0% but had no luck "cheating".

Schrijvertje

Thank you, GarryP.

After posting my question I also found out that Scribus seems to import my 1-bit images als greyscales, and they even stay greyscales when saving my design as PDF. This would be a very strange limitation of an otherwise great program.

Or am I doing it wrong; is there a way to get 1-bit PDF output? My Google searches gave rather inconclusive results.

GarryP

Unfortunately I don't know enough about Scribus internals to give you an answer.

I've a feeling that Scribus will "mess with" an image in order to be able to use it as it wants to, but as to why or how I have no idea.

I hope someone else can be of more assistance.

P.S. I've never really used 1-bit-per-pixel images since my old 8-bit computing days and my current work is pretty much image format-insensitive, i.e. as long as it displays okay then I'm happy.

P.P.S. One of the PDF/X output options might do things differently, but that's just a totally uninformed guess.

utnik

hi schrijvertje

there's something in the pipeline for one bit images – see bug#11029.
i don't know when scribus 1.5 will be published. at the moment the devs are working hard to solve the blocking bugs...

utnik

Schrijvertje

Thanks Utnik and GarryP. All my questions are answered.

(FYI, these images I talked about are scanned (fine) artwork, which should not be rasterized when printed, hence should not be converted to greyscale.)