Any XP system graphics wiz kids out there.......

User Account logon picture/logo/icon whatever you want to call it.... How do we make it transparent?, ie I want say a circular picture and anything outside the circle to be transparent so that my custom logonui graphics show through the transparency. (Using custom visual style and editing logonui.exe with reshacker)

I know it should be 48x48 pixels BMP (although GIF works too and probably JPG), initially I tried magic pink (RGB 255,0,255) and have tried Gif Movie Gear which seems to have limited success in re-mapping the transparent colour background (when displayed in the User Account dialogue the background of my picture is showing through the white of the dialogue background), however when I go to log in the background of my picture obscures everything underneath with black. O_o

Does Logonui have its own palette different from windows (magic pink didnt work here either, it was just bright pink). And if so what software would you recommend I use.... I have paint.net (latest non-beta version) and gimp 2.4.6 installed (aswell as the 30 day trial of GIF Movie Gear).

Edit: Moved topic from XP to the more appropriate forum. ~ Animal

try a .png file format. I had something that was transparent, although i don't know if it worked...

if nothing else, you can just pick the color and change the background to that colour.

.jpg will save with a white background
.gif will save with a white fringe
.png is only format with a true alpha/transparacy layer

Okay tried .png, heres the result ....

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p263/al...goniconprob.jpg

humph, white this time.

Just tried feeding this pic through gif movie gear aswell and selecting the white as the transparency colour.... still white
on the logon screen.

I tried googling through a couple of hundred pages varying keywords, but dont seem to be able to find anyone having tried something similar. I am starting to think this isnt do-able, oh well just have to settle for square and stop being so picky.

can you send me the pic? or post it here? i'll do it in photoshop for you,
P.S. look at my sig, that's a .png

Splodge pm'd thank you.

i guess you noticed by your sig it is already .png format, you need to ask the site admin at the site/forum you are trying to post it on to set permissions to allow .png, looks like they are only allowing .jpg and .gif, the defaults,
so where you living now?

Hmmm try going here, and right click image, save as, its in png format.

http://s130.photobucket.com/albums/p263/al...orlds_48x48.png

I am pretty sure I have the right transparency, it just will not play ball on the logon screen.

avatar, sorry, i meant avitar, it is in .png format, full transparency, or it is for me

I think I may have just found something but its going to take a fair bit of reading, I have caught sight of the uifile in logonui.exe and references to transparency, will get back and let you know if I have found the solution....

http://bfarber.com/Part-1-Let-s-Begin-t6904.html

and here for the rest of it

http://bfarber.com/XP-Login-Screens-f65.html

Edit: The more this goes on I believe I originally posted this in the right place, it is as I believed more an XP technical problem than a graphic manipulation problem @~Animal

wow! i'm sure the answer is in there somewhere, cant remember if .png is a bitmap or not, i know animated .gif's and .swf's are not all 3D formats to, but my sites and this site allow .png, so it should not be a problem

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p263/al.../Logon-Orig.jpg

I give in, tried mapping palettes from logonui.exe bitmaps into various different formats of my user account pic, and again re-trying magic pink (but the values set in bitmap 112).... getting tired. Its like the palette of the user account pic is mapped in a different way to the logonui bitmaps and just overlayed, or there is a 48 x 48 square blank graphic underneath the user defined pic which isnt transparent and needs locating.

Thanks for taking time out to try anyway , and for me at least I have learned a few things along the way... I may yet skin this cat a different way.

just pick the color of what it would be transparent looking of, and then stick that as the background color.