By: Eric Parker
Eric lives in Seattle and has been teaching Tableau and Alteryx for 5 years. He's helped thousands of students solve their most pressing problems. If you have a question, feel free to reach out to him directly via email.
If you’ve ever received an image file and noticed the background isn’t transparent, it’s likely that has caused you a problem. Look at this dashboard for instance:
It’s sharp looking with the exception of the background of the company logo in the top right corner.
I used to think you needed Adobe Photoshop to make the background transparent. I’d ping a coworker, send them the file, and anywhere from 2 hours to 2 days later I’d get it back the way I needed.
I learned that’s not necessary.
Here’s what I do now instead. First, I make sure the image is saved in a PNG format.
Next, I go to the website LunaPic which is a free, online photo editor.
If you go to the page I linked to above, it will look like this:
I then upload my image and click on the background to make it transparent.
After that, you can save the image as a PNG.
Lastly, you use the image as desired with the transparent background. Check out the improved look on the Tableau dashboard!
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