Workbench icon transparency

[Ulysses13]

Hello.

I'm having fun making my Workbench look the way I want, a kind of 90s pixel art look on Workbench 3.1.4 - firstly experimenting in FS-UAE before moving over to my actual A1200.

I've used FullPalette to create (and lock) my own 16 colour palette, so I can draw icons, which has been going well.

But, after changing the colour of my Workbench background I can see my icons all have a solid background colour around them. This is the first dark grey colour, which I assumed to be transparent.

You can see in the screenshot below how the 'Games' disk icon has proper transparency, but the ones I've drawn all have a grey surround. They look the same in Iconian, the dark grey being the background colour.

Am I doing something really obviously wrong? Is there a specific way to make pixels transparent?

[thomas]

The type of icon you create does not have transparency. And no, the games icon does not have proper transparency. It just uses the same pen as the background for the outer edges. And that's what you have to do for your own icons, too. Use the pen used for the background for the "transparent" areas.

However, as soon as you use a photo or some other pattern as background, not a plain colour, then you'll see that there is no transparency. The "transparent" areas are always drawn with a solid pen. They are just invisible if you use the same pen as the background.

To achieve true transparency, you have to save your icons in the new palette-mapped format, either as NewIcons or as OS 3.9 icons (a.k.a. GlowIcons).

[freakofnature]

Before saving as "newicon" check your settings for transparency in project menu. See attached screenshot.

Enjoy

[Ulysses13]

Thanks guys.

I wasn't actually using NewIcons, I was trying to keep things really simple and just use basic ones, but I can't work out what's going on in that 1.3 Disk icon. It doesn't have the blue colour in the background as part of the icon, so some sort of transparency is being honoured there. That's what made me think it was possible...

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Ulysses13

I can't work out what's going on in that 1.3 Disk icon. It doesn't have the blue colour in the background as part of the icon, so some sort of transparency is being honoured there.

I don't know how Iconian works. Does it allow you to choose a transparent colour? If so, make sure that you select colour #0.

[freakofnature]

Hi Ulysses, i think there is no standard method for transparent icons in older KS/WB versions. WB1.3 and 2.04 only supported opaque icons (except for 1.3 system icons). Standard icon format features no transparency bit to be set.

This all changed with NewIcons, PowerIcons and WB3.5+. New icon format supports transparency and individual palette entries. Standard icons are missing palette entries, so they expect a special palette set by the system.

Old systems were using 4 to 8 colors only, with the special case, that the last 4 colors are taken from the last 4 entries in a colortable. That was the reason why MagicWB required a tool to copy color 4 - 7 to the last 4 entries on a screen with a color depth higher than 8.

Regarding the "transparency" you noticed above, i think that's just a coincidence caused by wrong color remapping.

[Ulysses13]

Sorry for being thick. I am stumped here. I would understand the background (Pen#0) being 'transparent' if when I used that colour in my icons it became transparent. I'd understand there simply being no transparency in basic WB icons if there wasn't some sort of transparency evident in that 'Games' icon.

I've attached them both here. Perhaps someone who knows more about it than me can open them up and work out the difference....?

'NewDisk' is my one made from scratch in Iconian using my 16 colour palette, where Pen#0 isn't behaving like transparency.
'OldDisk' is the 1.3 looking one which I just inherited from somewhere, and Pen#0 is acting as transparent.

Perhaps the 'OldDisk' one is actually in a newer format?
Perhaps the palette isn't the same in them both?

Iconian has a 'Transparency' menu option but I don't know how it works and it doesn't seem to make any difference whether it's ticked or not.

[Ulysses13]

Still finding this confusing, sorry.

Here's a screengrab of my Prefs drawer. I've given it a blue background so you can see the 'transparency' of the icons.

Most of the original icons have transparency. These are just WB 3.1.4 icons, so not NewIcons are anything else. Pen#0 is acting as transparent. Some of them I've even opened up and edited a bit and saved again (eg 'Pointer'), retaining the transparency. Some though, you can see have Pen#0 visible as a grey area around the icon (ironically FullPalette for example). When I open these they look exactly the same and I can't see why they are behaving differently.

Any icon I make from scratch in Iconian uses Pen#0 as a visible grey colour and not transparent.

[Mad-Matt]

Maybe its just an Iconian bug. Does 3.1.4 not have its own icon program?

If you set the Highlight type to backfill, the transparency seems to work but you lose your second icon.

[Ulysses13]

If you set the Highlight type to backfill, the transparency seems to work but you lose your second icon.

This is it! If I do that I can use 'transparency' - just not have a different selected image for the icon.

Bingo. But Damn! What a choice to make!

I'm doing this for fun, and part of the fun is avoiding the newer formats and wringing the most I can out of the very basic setup. I guess this is now another restriction to embrace and see what I can do within it.

So - nice 'animated' icons in a clunky square, or basic non animated icons but freeform shapes...

[Ulysses13]

Thinking about this, it's such a clear distinction, yet not really documented.

I did a lot of Googling to try to understand this, and nowhere did I find an explanation of the simple fact that you can have an icon with 'transparency' but no second image, or an icon with a second image, but no 'transparency'.

Seems like a pretty fundamental thing to not really have been discussed a lot...

...a basic law of Amiga icons really.

[thomas]

It's a side effect, not an intended feature.

In WB 1.x you cannot use a different colour for the WB background, so all pixels of an icon drawn in background colour appear transparent although they aren't.

In WB 2.x and 3.x icons have an embossed frame around them, filled with the background colour. So even though you can now put a different colour or a pattern into the WB background, icons still appear transparent although they aren't.

Only with OS 3.5 and 3.9 (and now 3.1.4) you can opt out this embossed frame so that icons are drawn directly on the background pattern. But at the same time these OS versions introduce a new icon file format with palette-mapped icons which have true transparency.

The way you do icons is neither intended nor expected to work.

[Ulysses13]

It's so interesting.

The 'backfill' icons I'm making now do have 'transparency', they show any background colour or even background pattern I set, so they aren't just using the same background colour and tricking the eye, Pen#0 is acting as transparent in those simplest icons on WB 3.1.4.

A shame the double image icons don't do this too, or there wasn't a 'bit' to set for it - but I can live with it - as I said, it's an interesting restriction, and design choice to make. For example, icons on iOS have to uniformly be full rounded squares and that has seen some interesting examples of embracing that.

Thanks for all the help and advice!

[LocalH]

Not sure what the tools were like before 1.3, but 1.3's Extras disk came with a basic IconEd along with a tool called IconMerge to join/split two "normal" icons into/from one double-icon. I can honestly say I never noticed this myself, being used to either 1.3's "background = pen 0" without borders, or the later bordered ones on whatever background.