TPD3 - Graphic transparacy issue - Buttons from photoshop

ROO

I've been trying to create a TPD3 buttons in photoshop and insert into a AXD-CV6 (serial # 592411) and the background is suppose to be transparent. We've tried both .png & .bmp file types, with background colors of r99, g53, b99. The purple color around the button appears to see some of the pixels as transparent, but most are just purple.

I don't have enough experience with TPD 3 to know where to start. I've also tried to change the panel typt to the AXD-CV6PB/PB without any success.

Any ideas where I'm going wrong?

Thanks
Randy

vincen

If I remember well the old G3 touch panel were working only with BMP internally and so no transparency was possible ! I think it's a feature that appeared with G4 engine

Vincèn

John Nagy

You can use the purple to render transparency in G3 to a limited extent and only if you are very careful.

You can't use a JPG or PNG with compression. You MUST use a BMP so that the color is pure, no artifacts from compression. Don't worry, you aren't losing any RAM, the panel converts everything to 256 color BMP internally when importing.

Which brings the second issue. All the imported graphics get mapped to a common 256 color palette. You can chose which images to use to create the palette, and all those not selected get remapped to the best 256 of the selected ones after the fact. If the exact purple you must use for transparency is not sufficiently represented in the selected images used to generate the optimized palette, it will pick a similar purple, and that won't render transparent.

Finally, if you do everything right but have too many elements with transparency on a single screen, the G3 freaks anyway and renders purple.

In short, it's just about impossible to do much with transparency on a G3.

Can you tell I've done this too much?

ericmedley

I ran into acfew cases where I REALLY wanted a transparent button. So I built it manually in Photoshop by including the background in the button. Works well until you want to move the button on the panel...

John Nagy

I did similarly, I put the button image as part of the background image, then floated a transparent button over it for the text and momentary feedback.

ROO

TPD3 results

Thanks for all the replys.

After several iterations, my designer finally achieved the sequence of events to get the button transparacy correct. His backgrounds on some of his buttons that he used to get the color he wanted was fouling up the transparency.

BMP was the correct format, no- compression etc. All figured into the solution, so thanks for all the advice!

ROO