Recently bought an image on iStock, and I got as far as opening the image on inkscape, but I'm unsure on how to remove the gray and black checkered background to make it transparent. If anyone has any tips for me I'd really appreciate it! Thanks!

As you probably cannot share the picture, please let us know what type of object the background is.

Moini wrote:As you probably cannot share the picture, please let us know what type of object the background is.

It’s a picture of fire and smoke with a gray and black checkered background that’s the same pattern as a regular transparent one. I was told that the image could be edited to be transparent in a vector software but I can’t figure out how to do that.

I attached the image that I just saved from my phone so you’re able to see what I’m working with.

Thank you.

Is the checkered background part of the picture, or part of the background of the application you're using to view the image? The image you bought, is it a jpg image?

If you bought a jpg, then Inkscape is not the correct software to edit the pattern out. It would probably be smarter to look for a picture without checkerboard pattern, in that case.

So, what's the file format?

It seems that image is from Adobe Stock https://stock.adobe.com/lu_de/images/vector-realistic-isolated-fire-effect-with-smoke-for-decoration-and-covering-on-the-transparent-background-concept-of-sparkles-flame-and-light/216553506 and the checkerboard is part or kind of Adobe´s DRM protection. I´m sure it´s not part of the image you can buy a licence of. I have no idea what "Vector realistic isolated fire effect with smoke..." in this context means.


Cheers

Moini wrote:Is the checkered background part of the picture, or part of the background of the application you're using to view the image? The image you bought, is it a jpg image?

If you bought a jpg, then Inkscape is not the correct software to edit the pattern out. It would probably be smarter to look for a picture without checkerboard pattern, in that case.

So, what's the file format?

The file format is EPS but there’s also JPG files I can download as well. I was told by the website I bought it from that I can make the background transparent through any vector software if I used the EPS file.

Polygon wrote:It seems that image is from Adobe Stock https://stock.adobe.com/lu_de/images/vector-realistic-isolated-fire-effect-with-smoke-for-decoration-and-covering-on-the-transparent-background-concept-of-sparkles-flame-and-light/216553506 and the checkerboard is part or kind of Adobe´s DRM protection. I´m sure it´s not part of the image you can buy a licence of. I have no idea what "Vector realistic isolated fire effect with smoke..." in this context means.


Cheers

So you think I’m kind of just stuck with it and won’t be able to edit it? The support person from iStock told me I would be able to edit it to be transparent through any vector software.

If you could share the EPS file.... Or open the EPS file in Inkscape, and save as SVG, then share the SVG with us, then we could tell you for sure, instead of doing all this guessing.

brynn wrote:If you could share the EPS file.... Or open the EPS file in Inkscape, and save as SVG, then share the SVG with us, then we could tell you for sure, instead of doing all this guessing.

The file type is too large to post here. Is there another way I can send it to you? Do you know if the same file size limit applies via private messages?

Wzards wrote: So you think I’m kind of just stuck with it and won’t be able to edit it? The support person from iStock told me I would be able to edit it to be transparent through any vector software.

Please check your PM.

Cheers

You could upload the file anywhere, and give us the link.

brynn wrote:You could upload the file anywhere, and give us the link.

Here is a mediafire link. I uploaded it there because I'm not sure if you have dropbox or not, otherwise I can upload it there. Thank you!

http://www.mediafire.com/file/p7hyu0cx8 ... 288%29.eps

Hi.
I received the file.
Uggh - I´ve never seen a mess like this in my whole vector drawing career in the last 3 decades. None of my Inkscape versions can open this file at all. Affinity Designer+Photo will open but confront with over 3k bits&bytes of raster images, masked, blend, applied filters etc. I have no clue what´s the purpose of this kind of file. I doubt you can edit in any case - I could be wrong though.

Imports just fine in Inkscape master, but does not contain vector fire, just two embedded raster images, with lots of checkerboard elements still in them (after removal of the clipping and grouping and the little checkerboard tiles).

This file cannot be edited in the way you want with Inkscape.

Polygon wrote:Uggh - I´ve never seen a mess like this in my whole vector drawing career in the last 3 decades.

That made me curious.

Inkscape 0.924 fails to load the eps.
The alpha build I have fails to load it too.
Imagemagick viewer loads it, but cannot print to pdf as expected. Don't really know what to expect upon further investigation.
Online imagemagick converter fails to convert the file.


Eps header goes

PS-Adobe-3.1 EPSF-3.0
ADO_DSC_Encoding: Windows Cyrillic
Title: FireSmoke.eps
Creator: Adobe Illustrator(R) 17.0
For: Alexey
CreationDate: 7/30/2018
BoundingBox: 0 0 300 200
HiResBoundingBox: 0 0 300 200
CropBox: 0 0 300 200

AI8_CreatorVersion: 17.0.0

ADO_BuildNumber: Adobe Illustrator(R) 17.0.0 x256 R agm 4.7700 ct 5.3328

DocumentProcessColors: Cyan Magenta Yellow Black

So it was created with illustrator 17 in 2018 July by Alex, using a cyrillic keyboard most probably and in fact it has a cmyk colour profile.
Should be 300 px/200 px. So far so good.

Probably those familiar with imagemagick&command line can try converting it to rgb.
Trying to open it with scribus at the moment. For minutes now. Will see if it can decipher the data.

I can view and open the file perfectly on Linux... Maybe updating to a newer ghostscript version helps?

Probably.

Anyway, had forcequit scribus as it got stuck at 33%.

Moini wrote:I can view and open the file perfectly on Linux... Maybe updating to a newer ghostscript version helps?

I was able to open it in Inkscape after installing the newest version of ghostscript, but from there I’m lost.

Lazur wrote:Probably.

Anyway, had forcequit scribus as it got stuck at 33%.

Thanks for the help guys. Don’t trouble yourselves with trying to figure it out. I’m just going to email iStock support and see if they can do anything for me.

Wzards wrote:I’m just going to email iStock support and see if they can do anything for me.

Don't forget to aim for an svg. Illustrator should be able to save straight to svg.
Jet a simple pdf won't be better than an eps file.

Lazur wrote:

Wzards wrote:I’m just going to email iStock support and see if they can do anything for me.

Don't forget to aim for an svg. Illustrator should be able to save straight to svg.
Jet a simple pdf won't be better than an eps file.

I believe I was able to save as an svg file in inkscape but I’m not sure of the difference.

Lazur wrote:That made me curious.
Inkscape 0.924 fails to load the eps.
The alpha build I have fails to load it too.
Imagemagick viewer loads it, but cannot print to pdf as expected. Don't really know what to expect upon further investigation.
Online imagemagick converter fails to convert the file.

As I said I had no problem to load it elsewhere (macOS will converts EPS into PDF on-the-fly) but I still doubt that there´s any useful editing possible with that file.

I can´t determine any transparent area in this file and it´s all raster image based - 2266 tiles/clones/parts etc masked by vector shapes for what ever reason.
If a simple fire,smoke&ember image with translucent background is your goal like this particle simulation from my video editor it´s probably a case of 2 minutes:


Cheers

Polygon wrote:

Lazur wrote:That made me curious.
Inkscape 0.924 fails to load the eps.
The alpha build I have fails to load it too.
Imagemagick viewer loads it, but cannot print to pdf as expected. Don't really know what to expect upon further investigation.
Online imagemagick converter fails to convert the file.

As I said I had no problem to load it elsewhere (macOS will converts EPS into PDF on-the-fly) but I still doubt that there´s any useful editing possible with that file.

I can´t determine any transparent area in this file and it´s all raster image based - 2266 tiles/clones/parts etc masked by vector shapes for what ever reason.
If a simple fire,smoke&ember image with translucent background is your goal like this particle simulation from my video editor it´s probably a case of 2 minutes:
Frame.png

Cheers

That’s a shame I wasted $10 on it. I suppose it could’ve been worse though. I was really looking for an effect with more sparks than fire, which is why I was drawn to that one. Thanks for all your help even though there wasn’t much hope for it lol.

Polygon wrote:I can´t determine any transparent area in this file and it´s all raster image based - 2266 tiles/clones/parts etc masked by vector shapes for what ever reason.

I saw that too in the codes.
However illustrator tends to handle svg filters awfully and my wild guess was if there is still an editable file existing in its creators folder, maybe he could simply save into svg where hopefully won't be any rasterization of filters -which were most likely used all over the image.