PictureBox Transparent

Hi. I have a picturebox control with an image that is a GIF. The image is not an animation, only a single frame. The background of the image is transparent, as i erased it in photo shop. What code can i use to make the rest of the picturebox transparent, so there isnt a box around my circular GIF object? I want a result like in visual basic 6.0 with an image control. is there an image control for vb.net?

If you look under the properties for the picturebox, choose "BackColor" the first choice under "Web" is Transparent. Try that.

- Joe

Thanks but that doesnt work. What that does is colour the back of the picturebox to match that of the form. If i have many picture boxes on the screen to create a larger image, there is still a rectangle surrounding the main image. The image itself has a transparent background, so what i am seeing is the picturebox's background. How can the picturebox's background, not the actual images, be transparent? Are there any controls i can download?

The best way to do this is to simply draw the image directly over the form by overriding the OnPaint event:

Code:

---

Public Class Form1

    Private _myImage As New Bitmap("C:\myImage.gif")

    Protected Overrides Sub OnPaint(ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs)
        MyBase.OnPaint(e)

        e.Graphics.DrawImageUnscaled(New Bitmap(_myImage), 100, 100)
    End Sub
End Class

---

You can get a lot more creative, but that's the idea.

TCanuck : What do you mean by :

Quote:

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there is still a rectangle surrounding the main image

---

¿

This is perhaps a dumb comment / question from my side, but Did you perhaps set the Picturebox's BorderStyle to something different than None

Because, no matter how I try, I cannot replicate the same behaviour you've found.

I made 2 GIFs, both with Transparent Backgrounds. I added 2 Pictureboxes to my form, then, in each Picturebox, added each respective picture. With one Picturebox ( The Arrow ), I set the BorderStyle to None.
With the second Picturebox ( The Doughnut ), I set the BorderStyle to FixedSingle

I did not add any code.

And this is what I got at run time :

I have a gradient set as the background to an picturebox. I meant that regardless of whether or not the GIF is transparent or not, their is still a solid colored rectangle surrounding the image. You can see what i mean if you set a picture to a picturebox behind the arrow and then set the arrows backcolor to transparent.

I did, however, discover that if you execute the following code, the "arrow" in you example will be transparent to the picturebox behind it.

Code:

---

picArrow.Parent = PictureBox

---

Now, when there is code that moves the arrow's top and left attributes, there is a slight flickering/blinking effect. How can this be removed?

Have a look here, it explains why the flickering occur :
http://www.codeguru.com/forum/showpo...45&postcount=4

Thanks for the reply. All three options sound good. Could you please explain just how i could execute option 1, and if that doesn't work, option 2? Thanks in advance!

For method 1, Try putting this in your Constructor :

Code:

---

SetStyle(ControlStyles.DoubleBuffer, True)
SetStyle(ControlStyles.UserPaint, True)
SetStyle(ControlStyles.AllPaintingInWmPaint, True)

---

Sorry, but i haven't worked much with constructors and destructors. please explain. thanks in advance

OK, try this :

Code:

---

    Public Sub New()
        MyBase.New()
       
        SetStyle(ControlStyles.DoubleBuffer, True)
        SetStyle(ControlStyles.UserPaint, True)
        SetStyle(ControlStyles.AllPaintingInWmPaint, True)
    End Sub

---

Thanks for the prompt reply. I added that code to my Form and ran the program and there was an error. It said it was missing the "InitializeComponent" command so i added it in and then there were no more errors, but the flickering still occurred. Should i have done something else, or so i need to call the sub somewhere?

Hmm...
Could you perhaps attach your project ¿

My project is very large, so i will create a sample of what i'm using and what is happening. As you walk around in the demo I made (its like a game), you'll notice once you go over objects or you are walking against a collision detector, there is a lot of flickering. Hope this helps!

By the way, even the small portion sample i created exceeds the codeguru 2mb limit, even while zipped, so please download it at this link: http://rapidshare.com/files/39539835...oblem.rar.html

The only reason I can see why the zip may be so big is because of the EXE files included in it, is that so ¿

Just remove the EXE files, and see if you can upload it then :)