boo Posted December 19, 2005 Report Share Posted December 19, 2005 I have big problems to get transperancy to work on my knew toolbar.I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I created it in Photoshop CS and used PS CS to save it to .bmp.When you save the .bmp, you see different check boxes that you can check,like alpha channel for example, but I can't choose it because its grayed out Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1c3d0g Posted December 19, 2005 Report Share Posted December 19, 2005 IIRC, only BMP-32 supports transparency. But why not save it as .png and rename it to .bmp? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Firon Posted December 19, 2005 Report Share Posted December 19, 2005 because renaming won't work lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boo Posted December 19, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2005 as Firon said, renaming doesn't work.And I did save them in 32-bit BMP.Is there a setting that I have missed or something?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
splintax Posted December 20, 2005 Report Share Posted December 20, 2005 why save as BMP? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Firon Posted December 20, 2005 Report Share Posted December 20, 2005 Because the toolbars and status icons use bitmaps. There's no PNG support in the program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevvi Posted December 20, 2005 Report Share Posted December 20, 2005 I've never used a 32 bit bitmap b4 but, in PS, you have to create an alpha channel for your transparency and then save as a bitmap... at which point you'll be able to check the alpha... erm... check box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inf Posted December 20, 2005 Report Share Posted December 20, 2005 Often a bitmap transparency on things like toolbars is just a color key transparency, while the key color is the one of the upper left corner pixel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boo Posted December 20, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2005 I've never used a 32 bit bitmap b4 but, in PS, you have to create an alpha channel for your transparency and then save as a bitmap... at which point you'll be able to check the alpha... erm... check box.and how do you use a alpha channel?Because simply creating a alpha channel in 'Channels' doesn't work, there are still purple edges when I save it to .bmp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevvi Posted December 20, 2005 Report Share Posted December 20, 2005 You have to create the transparency on the alpha channel you create. Ermm... seeing as I know nothing about toolbars, the best I can recommend is to read the PS manual and play with it all.Sorry I can't be of more help. If I get time tomorrow, I'll look into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boo Posted December 20, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2005 I'm beginning to understand how the alpha channel works,but I still do not know a practical way to use it,right now, the best way I know how to use it,is by using the airbrush, white color and remove alpha channel of what I want to be visible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScubaSteve Posted December 20, 2005 Report Share Posted December 20, 2005 im quite lucky because ive never really used PS for saving in bitmap format, i either usually save to png or use the transfer plugin to send it to Axialis icon workshop where i can save as bitmap or ico. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevvi Posted December 20, 2005 Report Share Posted December 20, 2005 Keep on playin' Basically, you can make a selection, from a graphic on a layer (as I'd imagine you need to do) or by one of the selection tools and make that transparent in the alpha channel. Be sure to play with the opacity of the brush (air or otherwise)/fill/pattern/whatever you are using.As you're well aware, the best way to learn something is by trial and error. Sorry there isn't a quick fix (from me). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boo Posted December 20, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 20, 2005 ya, I noticed that you must use the alpha channel right from the beginning,to add it afterwards is just to hard to make it look good.So I need to remake some of my toolbar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boo Posted December 21, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 21, 2005 gah, this is hard to make it look good, is there any good tutorial for this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Determination Posted December 22, 2005 Report Share Posted December 22, 2005 Save the file as a PNG with transparency. Use AlphaConv to convert it to a 32-bit BMP. BING BANG BOOM. Done. I love AlphaConv too much for my own good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
splintax Posted December 22, 2005 Report Share Posted December 22, 2005 i will have to check out that program, looks useful...and that's a nice gallery you've got going there determination Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boo Posted December 22, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 22, 2005 determination, using AlphaConv seems to be the same thing as saving the .psd to a .bmp in photoshop, there are still purple edges around the icons.Should you do something with the alpha channel before you convert it?And does it matter what layer you have selected when editing the alpha channel? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Determination Posted December 22, 2005 Report Share Posted December 22, 2005 purple edges? When you make your design, just have the design over a non-existant background. You know that checkered background you get when you don't have one showing? Save it like that in PNG. Photoshop will save the transparency of each pixel in the PNG, and when you use AlphaConv, it carries that over to the BMP. PNG transparency and GIF transparency are 2 completely different things. GIF uses a color replacement type: it removes a specific color from being displayed. PNG uses another format that stores the transparency value of each pixel. If the pixel is completely opaque, it's 255, if the pixel is semi-transparent, it's some value between 0 and 255, and so on... Wiki on it here. I think of it as another value assigned to a pixel like RGB color values (5 Red, 5 Green, 5 Blue, 15 Transparency). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boo Posted December 22, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 22, 2005 YES! it worked This program is incredible, thanx for those tips Determination EDIT:..is it just me or has the quality of the icons become less good Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Determination Posted December 23, 2005 Report Share Posted December 23, 2005 I have never noticed any changes in quality using AlphaConv. All of my Alpha-Blended set have been passed through AlphaConv. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaosblade Posted December 23, 2005 Report Share Posted December 23, 2005 The only problem with that technique is that you need an alpha-blending enabled OS, like XP and ME (win2k doesnt work it seems). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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