PNG to BMP with transparency preserved

I need to turn white surrounding a BMP Xara drawing into transparent but still have it in BMP form. Is this possible using PNG somehow first?

I need to turn white surrounding a BMP Xara drawing into transparent but still have it in BMP form. Is this possible using PNG somehow first?

But if it's already a BMP and you want the white transparent and you're using it in Xara:
Select the image
Give it a "Stained Glass" transparency

Steve Newport

All bmp's exported show a rectangular frame with a white background and your drawing. I wnt transparency for the white background. So, I want only what's within the outside outline of the drawing to be preserved and recognized. It has to be bmp. I don't know if that is possible. PNG yes I think, but not BMP.

[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img]

Steve Newport

Please Shokan - tell us more about what you are trying to do in that application that accepts only bmps. Perhaps there is some other way. For instance why is the transparency desirable? Is another background colour involved? If so we could advise you how to make your bmp have the same colour background.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

Shokan,

EVERY bitmap is ALWAYS a rectangle.

Formats that support transparency, like GIF or PNG, just don't SHOW the rectangular appearance because of this very transparency.

BMP, like Steve and Ross already said, does not support transparency.

You may either use PNG, GIF and in certain cases TIF, or you can give your BMP the same background like it's placed on. This will then LOOK as if transparent.

If you are trying to let text flow around your shape (like in Xpress for instance), you will need to manually create a path when using BMP.

Wolfgang

Imagine and Illusion use 32 bit BMP's with their software. I've tried brining those files into Xara and it inverts the alpha channel, but it does import.

If only there were a way to simply invert alpha channels of transparent images brought into Xara.

Also anyone here have any luck with animated bmps?

Sheffield Abella
sheff@sheff.com
www.sheff.com

Do you know where there is an example?

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

Circa Power Point 3, there was the possibility to use a black & white device independent bitmap with transparency. As I remember, the bitmap was saved in MS Paint to the format. When inserted into Power Point, there was a recolor command, and you coould change black to a color. It was posible to stack several together containing different colors to get a transparent colored graphic. This is the best as I remember after such a long time. I always traced to vector, and deleted the backgrounds in those versions. Rich

An animated bmp really isn't animated in and of itself. The format of the bmp is like a vertical filmstrip with each frame below the one before it and the program cycles through the images. I remember once I had to make one for a custom browser. It replaced the animated Internet Explorer "e" in the upper right corner of the browser.

Netscape 4.7 has it but the newer versions of explorer don't anymore.

Sheffield Abella
sheff@sheff.com
www.sheff.com

It might be possible under program control.

For instance you can create a 32 x 32 pixel BMP based on the default 16 colour system palette.

Rename the extension to .ICO and use it as a desktop icon for shortcuts.

The pixel colour in the top left hand corner determines the transparency colour.

Such display control may be available as an MFC library call for BMP graphics.

But as I said, this is a software function and not inherently supported in the BMP format.

HTH

Peter

The style challenged Pete'sCrypt

In fact, I did find a way to make the bmp white areas disappear finally, when imported into the utility by filling in black.