Transparent Stack Background

[WaltBrown]

Hi!

I've been searching in the Forums for this but the answers I found don't seem to apply.

I am making a substack with is a small palette to do pixel editing (like old MacPaint). The palette has three equal square areas on it - an image that is basically a blown up pixel (8x8 or 16x16 or whatever) map of a small area of an image where the editing action actually takes place, a tool area to select tool actions, and a transparent area that shows the underlying image that is in another substack.

The attached picture illustrates what I want to do. The right hand square in the little substack has a square that is transparent, that shows where the tool is currently operating. The only solution I have at the moment is to duplicate the entire picture in the substack, move it in concert with the user moving the substack around, then editing the bitmaps of both the original and the duplicate when I do pixel editing. I would much rather have that right hand square be transparent so the original image shows through.

Any ideas on how to make the substack background transparent? I have tried creating a pattern using an alpha mask PNG pattern, that just turned the stack background black. I would like to avoid using windowShape because then I have to make a whole fake stack window.

Thanks,

[Klaus]

Hi Walt,

you cannot make a stack partly transparent ("masking" a stack) WITHOUT using "windowshape"!
The only thing you can do for the whole stack, which will "preserve" the title bar, is setting the stacks
"blendlevel", which will affect the complete stack however!


Best

Klaus

[dunbarx]

Walt.

Why does it have to be a stack? Wouldn't a group, say of an an image, a graphic or two and a palette, be conformable to what you want to present?

Craig Newman

[WaltBrown]

Thanks Klaus, I suspected that.

Craig, thanks. For some reason I got "substack" stuck in my mind - I wanted the basic image display and the bits tool to be separate "modules" as I have different projected other uses for each as well. I was about to go after windowShape, but now I think I'll try a group first instead, see how it works.