Image Transparency, You Want it? You Got it!

After a lot of tinkering, fiddling, poking, and prodding we’ve revamped the image support in gravatar. Now if you upload a GIF or a PNG we will preserve any transparency that might be in the image and serve that image to you as a PNG.

Unfortunately this does not retroactively fix existing images with black instead of transparent backgrounds. You’ll want to re-upload your transparent images, assign the new image to your email addresses. After that, give it about 30 minutes and clear your cache. Everything should work and look just fine.

A note for all you webmasters out there: If you’re worried about what transparent PNG images look like for your IE visitors, I would recommend taking a look at this handy Transparent PNGs in Internet Explorer 6 page which offers an explanation, information on workarounds, and a drop-in javascript which will work for all the images on a page.

Until next time – happy blogging!


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Comments

50 responses to “Image Transparency, You Want it? You Got it!”

  1. theseg Avatar
    theseg

    Great work!

    However, and I hate to be ‘that guy’, but there’s a slight issue with alphas still. Just look at my icon here and you’ll see that my drop shadow isn’t a bit wonky. The original PNG has a smoother fade, but Gravatar makes the shadow hard. Still, it’s welcomed progress!

    Like

  2. Δfoxtrot Avatar

    Thanks guys! I’ll certainly check it out,

    Like

  3. Paul Avatar
    Paul

    I’ve always meant to ask: Is there any way to make new images show up faster? They always seem to take 30 mins or so.

    Like

  4. Kelson Avatar

    Yay! Now to go re-upload…

    Like

  5. yorgyb Avatar

    Happy Transparencing!!!

    Like

  6. me Avatar

    all righty. good info

    Like

  7. tptblog Avatar
    tptblog

    Sounds great! Thanks for the new feature. 🙂

    Like

  8. Thomas Clausen Avatar

    Cool, thanks a bunch.

    Like

  9. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    If you’re worried about what transparent PNG images look like for your IE visitors […]
    I wouldn’t recommend doing any hacks to support an eight year old browser. It’s history and people who use the thing need to be punished.

    Like

  10. jdub Avatar

    Thanks heaps, dudes!

    Like

  11. Paul D. Waite Avatar

    > I wouldn’t recommend doing any hacks to support an eight year old browser. It’s history and people who use the thing need to be punished.

    Most people have no idea what a browser is, let alone that old ones don’t work very well. They don’t deserve punishment. A little work to give them a nicer experience is well worth it.

    Like

  12. Retodon8 Avatar

    Yay! Thanks for this. 🙂

    Like

  13. Clark Avatar

    Yeah! Thanks guys !

    Like

  14. lm86 Avatar
  15. hemasunder Avatar

    thanks for that, cool feature

    Like

  16. الجمر تحت الرماد Avatar
    الجمر تحت الرماد

    السلام عليكم
    أبدأ كلامي بشعر لإقبال
    كالطير غايته التقاط الحب في ظل القصور
    هو طائر لكنه لم يدر تحليق النسور

    Like

  17. Dougal Avatar

    Here’s a WordPress plugin which implements an IE png fix:

    http://wp-plugins.novacorps.com/iepngfix/

    I’ve used it on one of my sites which needed a transparent png in the header, and it seemed to work just fine 🙂

    Like

  18. Fahmi Adam Avatar

    yay! thanks guys.

    Like

  19. […] as happy. Finally, today I happily discovered that Gravatar had indeed come back from 1995 and had restored support for PNGs and transparency. Even better, when I attempted to log in, I could supply my WordPress.com password to prove I owned […]

    Like

  20. […] According to Chris Pirillo from Gravatar Blog He said the following. After a lot of tinkering, fiddling, poking, and prodding we’ve revamped the image support in gravatar. Now if you upload a GIF or a PNG we will preserve any transparency that might be in the image and serve that image to you as a PNG. […]

    Like

  21. Bruce Avatar
    Bruce

    🙂

    Like

  22. TheKhakinator Avatar

    Nice to see Gravatar still innovating.

    Like

  23. John Drinkwater Avatar
    John Drinkwater

    Bah at having to find a file from many years ago that worked fine before you went mad… if only you’d kept the originals!

    Like

  24. raoulman Avatar
    raoulman

    Ok, it’s good !

    Like

  25. yawner Avatar
    yawner

    Finally, never really understood why this was removed in the first place.. Thanks for listening to our concerns.

    Like

  26. brian Avatar

    Guess it’s time I got a *real* gravatar together. Nice to see the support for transparency.

    Like

  27. […] Image Transparency, You Want it? You Got it! […]

    Like

  28. David Avatar

    Yay! Glad to see my transparent avatars will work now. Thanks!

    Like

  29. racoon42 Avatar
    racoon42

    Nice thing 🙂

    Like

  30. Michael Wheeler Avatar

    How long before OpenID support?

    Like

  31. Jason Ho Avatar

    nice one there…looking forward to using it 😉

    Like

  32. Don Worthley Avatar

    Great job with identicons, wavatars and monsterids and now transparency. You guys are making some awesome progress! By the way, we’re adding Gravatar support to the blog module in DotNetNuke which should be out within a month, so you’ll be getting some DNN love soon.

    Like

  33. Regardez : transparent… comme avant !…

    Afin d’être totalement transparent (et pas que dans les PNG), ce texte comporte du Microsoft-bashing rétrograde (concernant leurs produits avant 2006). Faut reconnaitre qu’ils ont fait des efforts, et qu’il est temps de moderniser les… visiteurs…

    Like

  34. jurimi Avatar
    jurimi

    Excellent work!
    Thank for your hard work, Gravatar in introducing people to new ideas and transparency.

    Like

  35. oterosantos Avatar
    oterosantos

    Nice!

    Like

  36. Wesley Avatar
    Wesley

    Ninguein fala portugues aki naum eah’

    Like

  37. Mike Foley Avatar

    Not too shabby. 🙂

    Like

  38. Mike Avatar

    I will check this out.. Great work.

    Like

  39. Matt A. Avatar

    Is supporting png and transparent images really that innovative? I don’t know, it seems like this should have been a given.

    Like

  40. Psycho Dude Avatar

    Nice addition, good to know things are still improving greatly :D.

    Like

  41. maryan33 Avatar
    maryan33

    Thank you.

    Like

  42. Bert Avatar

    Very nice, tnx

    Like

  43. asghar Avatar
    asghar

    hey, ur avatar fits the title, u see?!

    Like

  44. fileinabox Avatar
    fileinabox

    Thanks guys! For now I will just stick with my jpeg because I am not so keen on the IE6 transparency fix scripts.

    Oh, wouldn’t you just love it if Microsoft had put a time bomb in all IE6 installs? Just one click and boom! All IE6 browsers in the whole world forcedly upgraded to IE7 🙂

    Yes, I know it is a compulsory update for home users, but there are so many retarded company IT departments where they simply block all browser upgrades…

    Like

  45. Austin Loan Signing Agents Avatar

    That’s great new, I know many of the images I use online aren’t jpeg.

    Like

  46. Molly Avatar

    Wow!! It’s getting better and better. Keep it up man.,

    Like

  47. francobollo Avatar
    francobollo

    if it is possible I want a translation in italian language.

    Like

  48. […] Actualización 7/6/08: Gravatar vuelve a soportar las imágenes con fondo transparente. […]

    Like

  49. morozgrafix Avatar

    I can’t seem to be able to upload PNG and retain transparency. When I get to crop & finish i still get black background. Is there anything special that needs to be done to get transparent PNG working?

    Like

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