help with bitmaps and transparent backgrounds

[rgremill]

Well, I think I found my solution here: http://www.lebans.com/transparent.htm

Isn't google great?

[roman]

Roman

[Sean Sedwards]

PhotoShop supports transparent BMPs, however the key question is does Access? Have a look in the help file to see what transparent formats it accepts.

Since your logo is relatively simple, you might also consider exporting a WMF from Xara X.

Regards - Sean

[nwilkinson]

Hmmm, my money's with Sean on this one: Access does not support transparency. The internal format is WMF or BMP, and the standard BMP format is non-transparent, i.e. does not support transparency either via the palette, or via an associated mask or alpha channel.

Interestingly, the only Office app that I know of to support transparency -- both GIF, and PNG binary & alpha -- is PowerPoint. Looks naff while you are editing, but looks great in full slideshow mode.

The only way to support transparency in Access is to store the image as binary data, then use a custom control to display it. Otherwise, store just the path to the GIF in the database and load that into the form or window for display.

Nick Wilkinson.
IsoCalc.com

[rgremill]

Nick, follow the link I posted earlier. Download the Access database provided on the site. The database has an example of using images with transparent backgrounds. The database also has a converter, which will turn your gif or bmp image into a metafile with a transparent background. The only problem (but not in my case) is that the background must be white. It seems to work for me.

[rgremill]

I spoke too soon. It worked in Access 2000 but not Access 97. What a bummer.

[rgremill]

Ok, here's my last post to this thread (yeah, right).

We were able to create an emf image with a transparent background using the converter database and the instructions found here: http://www.lebans.com/transparent.htm It worked when we started with a bmp and converted to a emf. But it did not work when we tried to convert a gif image to an emf image.

Although it worked, the image looked terrible.

So we went with plan B. We made the entire canvas of the Access form a bmp.