Embed image with transparent background

[Estheir]

I want to create some blocks of trees and other vegetation to embellish my architectural plans. I have a set of watercolor trees in photoshop with transparent background I want to use for this.

 

I want the images of these trees to be embedded in autocad instead of being inserted, so there's no reference link and I don't also have to send the images seperate from the autocad drawing when forwarding the file. Then I want to turn these images into blocks so they are handy in use.

 

When I use the command 'pastespec' to embed the image in autocad and check the box 'Image Entity', I can turn on 'Background Transparency' but it doesn't work, the background stays white. When I insert the image the normal way (drag and drop in autocad) and then turn on 'Background Transparency' it works perfectly, but the image has a reference link...

 

Is there any way to embed a picture in autocad with the option to have a transparent background?

 

Thanks in advance!!

[RobDraw]

If you are doing this for use as a standard block, I'd advise you not to go this route. In order for an image to be embedded it would be an OLE object. OLEs are buggy at best and can mess up an entire file at worst. You might run into performance issues or some other type of trouble with multiple instances of those blocks.

 

With that being said, images can be tricky to work with. I use images occasionally, mostly for tracing over them or a logo every now and then. What you can do to them depends on the format. You may need to export the image to another format in order to get the desired result.

[BIGAL]

I could be wrong often I am but I thought I read some where about clip image.

 

Hey look a Google

You can clip and display specific portions of a raster image in a drawing with a

clipping boundary. With a clipping boundary, only the parts of the image that you

 

F1 help Clip Raster Image

[RobDraw]

Clip is hardly anything like background transparency. I wouldn't want to trace around a bunch of branches for a clipping boundary. May as well draw it in AutoCAD if you are going that route. Oh, hey! There's a thought.

[SLW210]

IIRCC, you can only turn the background transparent in bitonal images.

 

If you have Illustrator or Inkscape, you could probably do a good job of making it a .dwg, .dxf or wmf.

 

(I just did one in Illustrator, took a couple of minutes, see below)

 

You might look into AutoCAD Raster Design, it might do what you need.

Palm-Tree.dwg