Transparency Tricks

Most computer users are familiar with transparency in images. Transparency simply makes the stuff behind an image show through proportionately to the transparency of each pixel. What isn’t obvious, perhaps, is that transparency has almost no value unless there is more than one image in a composition.

Background Transparency

Image transparency creates all sorts of creative possibilities when paired with motion. Imagine a foreground photo of a person with the background cut out and made 100 percent transparent. Now any image put behind the photo can move independently from the foreground photo. The image behind the person doesn’t have to be realistic. In fact, it can be anything, including a photo, a video, a slide show, a computer-generated image, a gradient, a floral pattern, a picture of a table cloth, whatever.