Draw - shapes that are just lines

Hi I’m attempting to use Draw to create jpg images that I’m inserting into a Lyx document. They’re very simple images - basically variations on squares and rectangles. I’m having no trouble creating the images, but no matter how I try - varying the fill and transparency settings, they always appear in my Lyx document with a white fill. The ‘paper colour’ in Lyx is a sort of beige and I’d like, for example, my square to appear with an interior showing the paper colour, rather than as white. In other words, I just want the lines of the square and not the fill. Hope this is clear. All advice much appreciated.

I’ve tried creating my shapes from the line tool, but I still get a white fill.

Roger D

JPEG format has no transparency. Any pixel in the bounding rectangle has a colour, be it white. Due to the lack of alpha channel, no pixel can be made transparent.

You should try another format. PNG has alpha management, therefore you can apply transparency on sub-areas.

But IMHO Draw is not the best tool for that. Gimp has more possibilities and can export to many formats.

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@rogerdettmer Why not export your drawings (you wrote: basically variations on squares and rectangles) into SVG (curve) format? Lyx can handle them, says the (German) manual… :wink:

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When creating JPG images you will always have a white background.
Select your objects and export as a PNG image.
When exporting, check the “Selection” box.

78540 HB Test Hintergrund bei PNG


See also:

Images - file format (Wikipedia)