How to copy a Paint document into Inkscape with invisible background?

Asked by Kelly

I want to copy an PAINT.Net document or picture into Inkscape, but have the background of the picture be invisible or transparent. The picture I want to copy isn't square, it's a boat or ship. I want to get rid of everything not the boat.
I've saved the PAINT doc in many formats, including png, pdn, bmp, gif, tiff, jpg, tga and dds; I've opened it in other drawing programs, and copied it into Inkscape from there... but the background continues to paste as white.
How do I get rid of it?

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Inkscape Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Solved by:
Alexandre Prokoudine
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Best Alexandre Prokoudine (alexandre-prokoudine) said :
#1

Kelly, it looks like for some reason Paint.NET doesn't preserve transparency when saving to PNG. When you save, please check if there are saving options that say something about transparency or alpha channel.

Also, not all file formats are capable of storing transparency. For example, JPEG cannot do it, and DDS is a file format for game developers that Inkscape won't even open.

Revision history for this message
Kelly (kellypeck) said :
#2

What I did which "solved" it.
In the Help for Inkscape it mentioned GIMP, which I downloaded and played with.
I saved the files in JPEG (I might be wrong, in which case it's PNG) in PAINT, then opened them in GIMP, then could paste them into Inkscape with invisible backgrounds.