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Description
There's something that stampmakers sometimes have a habit of doing, especially when using programs such as MS Paint -- and that habit is failing to remove the background from the very edges of a stamp.

As you can see in my example, there's a black background behind the stamp itself. In order for the stamp to look like a stamp, and not just a stamp on top of some other color, it's necessary to make sure that the edges surrounding the stamp are transparent.

"But how do I do that?" you might ask.

Well, I'm not sure about how Paint works to fix this transparency problem. I do know that it is possible to make selections transparent inside the program itself, however I don't believe that it will stay transparent if you save it. So, in order to fix this you'll need to....

...Use a different program!

The horror!

I personally use Photoshop , but you can also use other programs like Gimp .

Tips
Don't save stamps in Bitmap (.bmp) or JPEG (.jpg) formats - files of that format cannot be transparent.

The most common formats used for stamps with transparent backgrounds are Portable Network Graphic (.png) and Graphic Interchange Format (.gif). *

DeviantART is full of stamp tutorials for various art programs. Be sure to take advantage of that!

Be cautious when using transparent edges -- it's easy to have your stamp's contents bleed over the edge, which makes the stamp look sloppy. Here are a few examples:

on the left side of the word "controversial"

on the ends of the word "certificate"

on the bottom of the word "hit"

on the bottom of the word "war" when it bleeds down.

Related:

BG: Concrete by ~chikg33k

Description
There's something that stampmakers sometimes have a habit of doing, especially when using programs such as MS Paint -- and that habit is failing to remove the background from the very edges of a stamp.

As you can see in my example, there's a black background behind the stamp itself. In order for the stamp to look like a stamp, and not just a stamp on top of some other color, it's necessary to make sure that the edges surrounding the stamp are transparent.

"But how do I do that?" you might ask.

Well, I'm not sure about how Paint works to fix this transparency problem. I do know that it is possible to make selections transparent inside the program itself, however I don't believe that it will stay transparent if you save it. So, in order to fix this you'll need to....

...Use a different program!

The horror!

I personally use Photoshop , but you can also use other programs like Gimp .

Tips
Don't save stamps in Bitmap (.bmp) or JPEG (.jpg) formats - files of that format cannot be transparent.

The most common formats used for stamps with transparent backgrounds are Portable Network Graphic (.png) and Graphic Interchange Format (.gif). *

DeviantART is full of stamp tutorials for various art programs. Be sure to take advantage of that!

Be cautious when using transparent edges -- it's easy to have your stamp's contents bleed over the edge, which makes the stamp look sloppy. Here are a few examples:

on the left side of the word "controversial"

on the ends of the word "certificate"

on the bottom of the word "hit"

on the bottom of the word "war" when it bleeds down.

Related:

BG: Concrete by ~chikg33k