On 11-09-09 01:27 PM, Rick wrote:
Could you attach the image? If it is of decent quality (probably not if it was in a .doc) perhaps you could round trip it back to vector format it with trace in InkScape. Then you could do whatever you want with it. If it's a musical score, you could probably just use the png as a temporary background template and redraw it in InkScape. I do that all the time.
With all due respect, it seems just a basic task of opening the graphic in GIMP (or whatever) and changing the image mode to RGB (so color works) and then copying the layer, and inserting a transparent background layer. Choose the copied layer and adjust layer opacity to whatever you like. You can also select the background color on this layer and delete it.
There is no need to change it into vector unless you intend to scale it and the original image is ugly at the new size.
Once you've got something that works, save it as an image format that handles tranparency (PNG) and Bob's yer Uncle. Took me about 30 seconds to do this as I don't play with GIMP every day.
The GIMP is a little intimidating at first click, but once you use it a couple times it is actually simpler than Photoshop for a lot of tasks. If this project is problematic or very time sensitive, you could send me the image and I could do this for you in a couple minutes.
-- Bill