Eliminating white background out of a bitmap file

[Morph1]

Hey guys,
I hope there is an easy fix...,
what I am loooking at is situation where I got a bitmap (lettering) - 2 words, now I wanna stack them one above the other to maximize my material consumption , 54 " media stock...,
the words consist of lower and upper case lettering,
now when I move the words together I either get overlap of white background surrounding the words as they are just bitmap files,
I am unable to fit them to 54" media because of the white background around the words, is there any way I can exclude/eliminate the white background in the bitmap with in Flexi ??? or do I have to edit that in photoshop drop the background and reconvert to an alpha supporting format??? sure I can do that but is there a fix in flexi of this sort ??
I know in corel draw you can cut trimm/intercept any bitmap file or place it in a free shape container , I have been trying for the past half an hour with flexi and I can't find the fix for it...

Any help would be greatly appreciated..

thanks.

 

[Circleville Signs]

Not sure you can fix it in Flexi. If Flexi has a tracing option, trace them to create vector files, and then remove the white area.

if you have access to Illustrator it is a super easy fix.

 

[Morph1]

I know I can do it with AI or Corel or Photoshop, but to me its a step back, I am wondering if I can just do it within Flexi, which would be really convenient...

The problem is that I do have to maintain the same color consistency,
as this is for a client with over 240 locations so I do not wanna bother rerasterizing it again and possibly catch myself into a war of color profiling...

 

[J Hill Designs]

is there a crop function in flexi? (dont use it, so...)

 

[strypguy]

Try going to bitmap and make transparent. Select background with wand and then you should be able to stack them.

Depends on how busy your file is but if it is just a word with white background it should work perfectly.

John

 

[iSign]

you need to enable "bitmap tools"
Flexi doesn't have many bitmap tools, but it has "crop"

 

[Morph1]

Went into bitmap tools , got the lasso mask , embrace the corner of bitmap press ctrl + x and the whole bitmap gets cut not just the corner that I highlighted... make transparent how ?, just wondering ... magic wand and then where is the transparent option ?

thanks guys, seems like we are almost there

 

[iSign]

crop is your friend. you shouldn't need the unpredictability of those other tool (though they could be helpful under different circumstances) just crop it and be done.

 

[Morph1]

i think its happening..., just got to wait a bit its a large bitmap lol,
will update shortly

 

[Morph1]

geez !!!!, thanks strypguy.. you're the flexi man....

thanks again , it works as a charm...


cheers !

 

[iSign]

make transparent how ?, just wondering ... magic wand and then where is the transparent option ?

still not the way I'd fix your file because the magic wand might select all the white bg, but might screw up the edge of your letters... but for future reference, you can make that selection "transparent" with the delete key.

 

[Morph1]

no worries I have a half an inch bleed,
so feeling quite safe in this case.

Thanks

 

[strypguy]

Glad that worked for you.

John

 

[signguy 55]

I know how to vectorize a bitmap in Flexi, version 7.5 so you can add cut lines and get rid of the background completely. It's a 5 step process but takes about 30 seconds. Let me know if you need it.

 

[trimguy]

I wouldnt mind seeing that please.
Thanks