The information in this article applies to:
- Full AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT with a template
- M-Color Plus, versions 7.1 and later
Summary
A simple user's guide on how to insert transparent background images of people, trees, cars etc. to M-Color drawings and Information about Dosch VizImages.
More information
To get a color image to your M-Color drawing is a 2-step procedure. First get an image that has transparent background, then insert it into AutoCAD and do the usual Preview and Plot to get the plot to M-Color Preview. There is just one additional thing you need to do in step one compared to using a raster image without a transparent background.
- You can insert a raster image to your DWG in AutoCAD using the command IMAGEATTACH, or choose Insert / Raster image... from the menu bar. Then select the raster image and use the TRANSPARENCY command or modify the properties of the image and set the Transparency property to Yes. See AutoCAD help for further details.
- First make sure you are using M-Color 7.1 Plus version or later as the Standard version does not support raster images and previous versions of M-Color do not support transparent backrounds. This step does not have any additional steps to the usual Preview and Plot step that you do to get drawings from AutoCAD to M-Color. The raster image background will be transparent in the M-Color document. M-Color from 7.1 to 8.0 supports fully opaque and fully transparent pixels, M-Color 9 supports also soft transparency.
For your information: All the Dosch images come in two formats. The format to use with M-Color (AutoCAD too) is TIFF.
Tagged Information File Format (TIFF) properties in the Dosch image collection:
- Color representation: True color RGB with alpha channel
- Compression: Uncompressed
PSD format is used by Adobe PhotoShop. PSD files cannot be used with AutoCAD and hence not with M-Color.
References
Dosch image collection is presented at
www.motivesys.com. Follow the links Products / Get Images of Trees, Plants & People for M-Color.