Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum and just started learning Inkscape few days back. I am trying to create a logo with just text and save it as an image with transaparent settings to zero. I am getting full white background image. Can somebody help me what settings should I change in order to get transaparent background images?

Thanks for your help.

By default, Inkscape documents always have a transparent background. You can check by going to File > Document Properties--you should see that it's fully transparent white. Exported bitmaps will then have a transprent background... unless you've drawn in a white box

Note that unlike raster software, vector programs like Inkscape do not display a checker-board effect to indicate transparency.

but also some bitmap programs (MS Paint for instance) also show the transparent section in white. MS Photo editor program shows transparency as a checkerboard. Gimp (a good open source bitmap program) shows the checkerboard.
If you open up the png directly in certain versions of Internet Explorer, it flattens all transparency. i.e. if the transparency is a gradient it shows all parts of it as totally transparent. Incidentally, rendering to pdf also flattens transparency..and loses any blur.

But do make sure you're using File > Export Bitmap rather than the Cairo PNG option on the Save As dialogue.

I'm not really sure why Inkscape still offers the latter, as it seems to be the cause of many of the PNG export problems and questions here, yet offers no advantages whatsoever as far as I can tell.

Thank you so much for your answers. Initially I was using Save as Cairo PNG and had problems. Now as per Xav suggestion I tried File > Export to Bitmap and it worked out well.... I tried the transparent background image in powerpoint and it worked as it is supposed to. Thanks for your support.

Xav wrote:I'm not really sure why Inkscape still offers the latter, as it seems to be the cause of many of the PNG export problems and questions here, yet offers no advantages whatsoever as far as I can tell.

Use Cairo PNG myself, I do not. Written a tip, Jedi master Alexander Prokoudine has!
http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/getting-crisper-text-out-of-inkscape

druban wrote:Use Cairo PNG myself, I do not. Written a tip, Jedi master Alexander Prokoudine has!

I might be missing something, but I'm not convinced that's a good reason for using the Cairo exporter at all. The implication is that the Cairo exporter is doing sub-pixel rendering of the text (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering), but that really makes little sense in a PNG file. As he mentions, it only works when viewed at 100% zoom, but he fails to account for it only working if your monitor has the sub-pixels in the same arrangement as used by the Cairo exporter. In other words, it could actually make the text look worse when viewed on somebody else's screen.

Sub-pixel rendering can only really be done safely at the final output stage. You can't pre-render it and expect the results to be portable to other systems.