How to Makie an Image TRANSPARENT using LIQUID and other programs (like Vegas and Première Pro CS3 )

FIRST there will exist at lest 2 issues that you must resolve initially - and that will determine some of your next steps..

1. Do you have a solid background, and if so, do you just want to make the background color transparent so the rest of the logo shows through when you put it in a video.

2. Do you have a logo that you need to cut out of the picture and then make certain areas of it transparent in a video.

NEXT - what kind of picture file formats does your software editing program work with ?

NEXT -  What kind of photo editing programs do you have - and funny enough - some of the cheap/free ones allow you to do make the file transparent EASIER than some of the expensive programs.

FINALLY - what actual editing program was the file created in.  That one may be hard to find out - but often there is a RAW program file format that the photo editing program used

Ok - let's walk through a couple of processes.  A client had an image file they had designed, and they asked the designer to send me an image so I could use it in a video.

The designer sent me .ai file and a pdf with it in.  I was using Liquid Edition v 6.1sp2 as an editer.

Liquid's (the editor I use) Title Deko creates .bmp files that have a transparent backgrounds.

Title Deko can save a file in the following formats: 

acording to Title Deko help, TIF and TARGA (TGA) files can be saved with an alpha channel.

Also, These types of files can be created in TitleDeko Pro:

TitleDeko Pro Graphic (.tdk) Style (.sty) Preset Styles (.pst) Preset Shaders (.shd) Typeface (.fac)

However, Title Deko also allows you to save the file as bmp, gf (graphics factory)gif, jpeg, tga tif vi psd (photosop), .g (pinnacle), .vi (vii), wmf (windows meta file), pct (macintosh picture) and .pcx.

And finally,  Liquid also imports several photo file types - *.bmp, *.png, *.tga, *.tif, *.pcd, *.psd, *.pcx, *.bsi, *.jpg, *.tdk (TitleDeko)

So here's what I know so far.

Liquid seems to deal with alpha channels on at least tif, tga, bmp, and png files (and probably properly constructed psd files).  Liquid will not import a gif graphic file - which also has an alpha channel.

I happen to have Adobe Illustrator (came with CS3) - so I can open the the raw file - it may not be at it's rawest - but probably - I don't really know.    Illistrator lets you save in a lot of formats - but I find the only thing that worked was to EXPORT the file to web and save as a PNG 8 file format.