makeing BMP orb's from PNG files

[X-ile]

My first post..

I have been making some orb's recently and found out they need to be BMP, but I have no clue how to make bmp with transparency.

Can you tell me the best way to go about it?

btw, I have googled and only found only unresolved or complicated answers.

[Mr GRiM]

My first post..

I have been making some orb's recently and found out they need to be BMP, but I have no clue how to make bmp with transparency.

Can you tell me the best way to go about it?

by the way, I have googled and only found only unresolved or complicated answers.

There is no such thing as transparency with BMP, what you need to do is make the background black and that is represented as transparent when applied, make sure you save as a 32bit BMP.

[X-ile]

So, if I make an image in any app and use black for the back ground then export it into 32bit bmp.. it will (the black background) be transparent in the task bar when installed?

speaking in the snse of start orbs.

nothing needs to be done to the image before or after?

[Mr GRiM]

That is pretty much it, I have seen people talking about removing the Alpha channel as well before you save, I have done a few start buttons but allot of them seemed to bright when applied and I think removing the alpha channel is meant to stop that happening, I still haven't figured it out 100% yet.

[X-ile]

ok thanks, I will keep that in mind when making them..

What program did you use to make your sig?

[X-ile]

Big thanks for the tip.. it's done easily in Photoshop.. thats the only program that seems to allow all the above in sequence

save as bmp remove alpha and choose 32 bit.. done.

very nice.. thx

[Mr GRiM]

Your welcome, the program I used to make the sig is a free program called Sqirlz Water Reflections.

[lefty1981]

or you can do it with irfanview!

[X-ile]

Thanks

[kontact]

I will extract the start orb from the default explorer. I make a custom image in Paint.NET to the proper scales of the original win7 start orb (HxW). Place the custom orbs in the order you want them animated. And save that as a .png without any background color or maskings at all. Then open the new custom orb I just made with Gimp. No modifications to the image, just click "file" then "save as". Then click the original default orb to save the new orb as it, and overwrite the win7 original orb. Sounds funky, I know. But it works.