Well, first of all, to be blunt, you should not be picking up graphics from other sites. This is stealing and is a violation of copyright laws. Please don’t do it.
However, if you are making a graphic from scratch in Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop, or Photoshop Elements there is a way to make the background transparent or match it to your blog’s background color.
Paint Shop Pro transparency tutorial and another.
Photoshop/Elements transparency tutorial.
NOTE: .jpg does not support transparency. You’ll need to use .gif or .png
Updated to add: A few comments have pointed out that you can use graphics that you’ve legally downloaded via a subscription or online royalty-free site. This is true. You’ll want to read any site agreements, though, to confirm what you can and cannot do with those graphics.
Another way in which people may have graphics that are totally okay to use would be when they buy royalty free graphics/images through one of the several online services where you can purchase them. 🙂
I understand about the “stealing” and all. But if I am subscribed to a service like clipart.com, I can use those graphics — is that right?
Thanks for this post. I’ve saved images with a transparent background and a .png extension. It shows up just fine in firefox (translucent), but still has the white box in ie. Can you think of a reason why this is the case? I went in and changed the background of my image to match the background behind it, but you can still see a slight box-like image. Thanks.
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