How can I specify a transparent colour for an ICO
Moderators: helmut, XnTriq, xnview
How can I specify a transparent colour for an ICO
Hello.
I have an image that I want to use as an icon (an ICO file). How can I specify which colour to make into a transparent background?
(If necessary, I can create the image as a GIF before saving it as an ICO.)
Thanks in advance.
Mike
I have an image that I want to use as an icon (an ICO file). How can I specify which colour to make into a transparent background?
(If necessary, I can create the image as a GIF before saving it as an ICO.)
Thanks in advance.
Mike
Re: How can I specify a transparent colour for an ICO
Hi Mike!
Exactly, that's how it's done. The icon gets assigned the GIF's transparency (if any).MikeLewis wrote:(If necessary, I can create the image as a GIF before saving it as an ICO.)
You're welcomeMikeLewis wrote:Thanks for your reply.

Last edited by XnTriq on Tue Jul 04, 2006 7:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
XnTriq,
OK, let me make sure I understand this right.
I have created a GIF in my picture editor. It has two colours: pale yellow and pale blue. I want the yellow to be transparent.
I open the GIF in XnView. I go to Edit / Edit ColorMap. I see a grid of 256 colours. The closest one to the yellow looks like Index 213.
I close the ColorMap, and go to Tools / Options / Write / GIF. I tick the box "Set transparancy value to palette entry", and enter 213 into the adjacent box.
Finally, I save the GIF as an ICO. The yellow now appears to be transparent.
This seems to work fine, but I just wanted to be sure I understood it right. Is this the recommended way of doing it, or am I missing a shortcut?
Thanks for your patience.
Mike
OK, let me make sure I understand this right.
I have created a GIF in my picture editor. It has two colours: pale yellow and pale blue. I want the yellow to be transparent.
I open the GIF in XnView. I go to Edit / Edit ColorMap. I see a grid of 256 colours. The closest one to the yellow looks like Index 213.
I close the ColorMap, and go to Tools / Options / Write / GIF. I tick the box "Set transparancy value to palette entry", and enter 213 into the adjacent box.
Finally, I save the GIF as an ICO. The yellow now appears to be transparent.
This seems to work fine, but I just wanted to be sure I understood it right. Is this the recommended way of doing it, or am I missing a shortcut?
Thanks for your patience.
Mike
XnTriq,
I've only just started exploring XnView. So far, I am very impressed with its features. But I've still got a lot to learn.
Many thanks for your patient help.
Mike
That's fine. It's not a problem. I just wanted to be sure I had got it right.I'm afraid that's the only way you can add tranparency to icons, cursors, GIFs or PNGs.
I've only just started exploring XnView. So far, I am very impressed with its features. But I've still got a lot to learn.
Many thanks for your patient help.
Mike
Grouse again !
—> marsh
Hello B. !
- I grouse against this non-display of the transparency for icons since… bhuuuu ! Almost ten years ?
- In the French Thread you are talking of, I requested first a better feature to extract icons from EXEs and other files in the same painting : When you see them in the preview-list they are OK (white background), but when you choose one and get it, it's unusable the most times because that crappy black background !
- Moreover, you can't change and save an icon with a transparent BG, then the black stays and the icon is lost…
- As a minimal workaround, I suggested an option to choose the BG-colour when extracting¦processing *.ICO files…
• Further, I give a trick : make a screen shot of the preview list, and crop the icon you want…
Not handy, but better than black !
- I asked for know what is the difficulty here (if any…). Pierre answered that there no special one, but that many viewers behave the same
…
… that is not a satisfactory reply, IMHO…
• From that thread, one can get a small set of samples as various colour-depths to perform tests.
They were there for Pierre especially
- He tells one can use the Win extract feature for the thumbnails, but this is a misundestanding (?), since that doesn't the trick to recover icons like said here at top.
- So, currently the issue remains…
- Aside, there are too issues to display the non-standard icon-sizes in the tool-bar (else than Win sizes 16², 32² etc.), the icons are damaged and don't look nice…
But this is another story…
FR
Claude
Clo

- I grouse against this non-display of the transparency for icons since… bhuuuu ! Almost ten years ?

- In the French Thread you are talking of, I requested first a better feature to extract icons from EXEs and other files in the same painting : When you see them in the preview-list they are OK (white background), but when you choose one and get it, it's unusable the most times because that crappy black background !
- Moreover, you can't change and save an icon with a transparent BG, then the black stays and the icon is lost…
- As a minimal workaround, I suggested an option to choose the BG-colour when extracting¦processing *.ICO files…
• Further, I give a trick : make a screen shot of the preview list, and crop the icon you want…
Not handy, but better than black !
- I asked for know what is the difficulty here (if any…). Pierre answered that there no special one, but that many viewers behave the same

… that is not a satisfactory reply, IMHO…
• From that thread, one can get a small set of samples as various colour-depths to perform tests.
They were there for Pierre especially

- He tells one can use the Win extract feature for the thumbnails, but this is a misundestanding (?), since that doesn't the trick to recover icons like said here at top.
- So, currently the issue remains…
- Aside, there are too issues to display the non-standard icon-sizes in the tool-bar (else than Win sizes 16², 32² etc.), the icons are damaged and don't look nice…
But this is another story…

Claude
Clo
Last edited by Clo on Sat Feb 03, 2007 8:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
Old user ON SELECTIVE STRIKE till further notice •
Marsh,
You wrote:
I've been following XnTriq's advice (see above) re transparency in GIFs. So far, this has worked pretty well. But when I save the GIF as an ICO, I've been getting mixed results.
It's something that it would be nice to see improved in a future version, but right now it's a lot better than anything I've tried before.
Mike
You wrote:
I realise that. I was checking the tranparency by dropping the images on a page with a coloured background in Frontpage.I think transparent icons show up with black colour in XNV. So it is useful to check them with Firefox when done.
I've been following XnTriq's advice (see above) re transparency in GIFs. So far, this has worked pretty well. But when I save the GIF as an ICO, I've been getting mixed results.
It's something that it would be nice to see improved in a future version, but right now it's a lot better than anything I've tried before.
Mike