Not sure if this is the right forum, but I'd be grateful for any advice available.
I am not a heavy PDF user, but 2 or 3 times a year I have to create a handbill for an amateur concert. The output must be high-quality PDF to go to the printer.
i have to use a logo which is a little sketch of a double bass player, which I have as a monochrome TIFF image. I use MS Publisher 2000 to create the publication and print to the output PDF (Publisher is not, I believe, the source of the problem before anyone dives in...).
I need to include the logo, with a transparent background.
I can create a GIF file with a transparent background that looks fine in Publisher, but when I create the PDF (I've tried using various tools), the PDF contains a white filled box around the image instead of a transparent one.
Research on the internet and untold hours struggling with Photoshop Elements (why o why did I never activate my licence to the old Starter Edition :-() have led me to believe that since Publisher, or any other MS tool, apparently uses PostScript output to create the PDF file, and PostScript does not support transparency, I am stuffed.
A friend has provided a partial workaround - by using PSE to create a bitmap and saving as an EPS file with "transparent whites", I can embed this file into my publication instead of a GIF and all is fine, as long as my logo is OK in black on a light background. Problem solved, in this case.
However, this time around I need my logo to be in white, or a light colour, over a dark background, and I cannot find any way to do this. Using PSE to invert my EPS logo file gives me transparent on a black background, whereas what I need is white on a transparent background....
All suggestions gratefully received - many thanks