Export a BMP or JPG with a transparent background?

[Christine Farrelly]

What about a background the same as the place it will show up.

Christine

[jonnycross]

use png format it does rather well with transparencies

regards jon

[handrawn]

ummm - except the program in question does not appear to support .png [ as stated in post #1] , so that is not going to solve the problem unfortunately

[Bowmaned]

I appreciate all the help. Thanks!

Steve J - I have been drawing the display with Xtreme, but there is a couple fills like gravel etc, but I could get rid of those if necessary. I have a lot of bevel shading to give conical and cylindrical shading, and extruding I-beams etc. plus shadows and the like. Its not acting like it wants to work ...

David: I'm not sure as far as the "poking holes" idea. But I like it, two problems though, I don't think the program does it--i'll have to check--and second, some of the shapes are complex in that they have transparent areas within the actual shape and they have support cables that are by themselves for the grain spouts. Its kinda like the problem with stencils when you have the middle of an "o" or "p" or "b," etc.... if that helps lol.

Christine: Not a bad idea, I had been playing with it too, making the background the same so you just wouldn't notice a change. The problem arises, is that the background changes. If you can visualize a grain elevator from a top view with a little bit of angle is that the grain spouts are over the conveyors, and sometimes a conveyor might be under a spout, other times it won't be drawn in because it isn't running. So i haven't figured out a way because of the different combination of possible backgrounds.

Jon: I unfortunately can't use that format like Steve J said -- thanks Steve

[handrawn]

Hi

I think I'm right in saying the [xtreme] WMF is now fairly old - PDF would be better, but again not a format on the list

[Even with PDF some of the complicated effects such as complex transparencies/bevels may not render correctly, due to limitations of the format with respect to XAR]

As Jon said - the ideal solution would be PNG, were it possible

In a nutshell, I think, you are limited by the import types the second program offers, and will have to stick to less complicated effects in the WMF

[Soquili]

What language is used to program the FactoryTalk View Machine Edition (Version 5)? Also what is the OS?

If it is a windows based OS there is a low level API BitBlt function that can make areas of a Windows Bitmap (.bmp) file transparent. If you are an experienced C/C++ progammer you can use BitBlt in your code.

[handrawn]

never knew that Bill

[Soquili]

Steve there are programmers that never knew that.

The transparency is only available for the bitmap within the application using the BitBlt function.

[steve.ledger]

.ico and .bmp are apparently very similar formats.
.ico supports transparency and so does .bmp (it's commonly used for game sprites and application skins)

Here's a Photoshop tutorial for creating 32bit .bmp with transparency, from Axialis.

Create a Transparent Image with Adobe Photoshop®

All Axialis Software products support images with Alpha Channel transparency. PNG, BMP and PSD file format actually support alpha channel.

I don't have PS on this machine, so I'd be interested if anyone can try it out and report their results?

[Soquili]

Yes .bmp and .ico are very similar formats.

The attached image shows some .bmp image files provided with Visual Studio for use in some of the example source code.

The red and magenta backgrounds are used by the BitBlt function to determine the areas to be transparent.