Just the photo, not the background

[Bluewater]

I am new to PS7 and it's capabilities and would like to accomplish this task. I have a photo that I want to apply a border to and would like to only have the border and photo transfer and not the white background. My sequence is, I open the photo, open a new page that has a transparent background. I then transfer the photo to the transparent background and apply the frame layer over the photo. My layers window show three layers. I have tried to merge visible only, link the frame and photo and delete the transparent background, and a couple other methods I've forgotten. When I have saved any of the above as a jpeg for my website, a white background appears in the final version also, and will then increase file size for the page. I would like only the photo and frame. Is this possible? Thank you for your help.

[Xaran]

Have you tried cropping the image to the size of the frame?

Christine

[Bluewater]

Have you tried cropping the image to the size of the frame?

Christine

Christine,
The frame I have is a rough edged frame that has been transfered from an enlarged image in darkroom. There are many subtle tones with gradations. In the transparent layer background, all the tones and soft edges are there. Cropping will still keep the white area around the soft edges. If I then apply the frame with photo to alternate tone, the white background is still there.
Thank you for your suggestion.
Roman

[Xaran]

It is almost certainly due to the format you are saving the file in.

JPG which is the most common format cannot have transaparent areas. Try saving as a PNG or transparent TIF file.

Christine

[Bluewater]

It is almost certainly due to the format you are saving the file in.

JPG which is the most common format cannot have transaparent areas. Try saving as a PNG or transparent TIF file.

Christine

Since most of my needs will be directed toward applying this tecnique to web, and the photos with combined frame will be in B&W, is there any loss of quality or compromise by saving as a GIF? I have read that GIF only works with 256 colors, but with B&W that shouldn't matter? My concern is to have the best quality possible as a finished image.
Thanks

[Xaran]

Gif should work ok, 256 is the maximum number of colours for GIF files. If you are saving BW photo it probably has many shades of grey, but should save ok as GIF.

Christine