Transparent background on winforms

Question

I wanted to make my windows form transparent so removed the borders  controls and everything leaving only the forms box  then I tried to the BackColor and TransparencyKey to transparent but it didnt work out as BackColor would not accept transparent color  After searching around I found this at msdn   SetStyle ControlStyles UserPaint  true   SetStyle ControlStyles OptimizedDoubleBuffer  true   SetStyle ControlStyles SupportsTransparentBackColor  true   this BackColor   Color Transparent  this TransparencyKey   BackColor    Unhappyly it did not work either  I still get the grey or any other selected color background   All I wanted to do is to have the windows form transparent so I could use a background image that would act as if it was my windows form   I searched around here and saw many topics in regards opacity which is not what I am looking for and also saw some in regards this method I was trying but have not found an answer yet   Hope anyone can light my path   UPDATE   image removed as problem is solved

User · Answer

I had drawn a splash screen  32bpp BGRA  with  quot transparent quot  background color in VS2013 and put a pictureBox in a form for display  For me a combination of above answers worked  public Form1         InitializeComponent         SetStyle ControlStyles SupportsTransparentBackColor  true       this BackColor   this pictureBox1 BackColor      this TransparencyKey   this pictureBox1 BackColor     So make sure you use the same BackColor everywhere and set that color as the TransparencyKey

User · Answer

What works for me is using a specific color instead of the real ability of  png to represent transparency   So  what you can do is take your background image  and paint the transparent area with a specific color  Magenta always seemed appropriate to me       Set the image as the Form s BackgrounImage property  and set the color as the Form s TransparencyKey  No need for changes in the Control s style  and no need for BackColor   I ve tryed it right now and it worked for me

User · Answer

My solution was extremely close to Joel s  Not Etherton  just plain Joel    public partial class WaitingDialog   Form       public WaitingDialog                 InitializeComponent             SetStyle ControlStyles SupportsTransparentBackColor  true           this BackColor   Color Transparent          this TransparencyKey   Color Transparent     I had to add this to get it to work              Other stuff            protected override void OnPaintBackground PaintEventArgs e       Ignore

User · Answer

I ve tried the solutions above  and also  many other solutions from other posts   In my case  I did it with the following setup   public partial class WaitingDialog   Form       public WaitingDialog                 InitializeComponent             SetStyle ControlStyles SupportsTransparentBackColor  true           this BackColor   Color Transparent              Other stuff            protected override void OnPaintBackground PaintEventArgs e       Ignore          As you can see  this is a mix of previously given answers

User · Answer

A simple solution to get a transparent background in a windows form is to overwrite the OnPaintBackground method like this   protected override void OnPaintBackground PaintEventArgs e          empty implementation      Notice that the base OnpaintBackground e  is removed from the function

User · Answer

I tried almost all of this  but still couldn t work  Finally I found it was because of 24bitmap problems  If you tried some bitmap which less than 24bit  Most of those above methods should work

User · Answer

Here was my solution  In the constructors add these two lines  this BackColor   Color LimeGreen  this TransparencyKey   Color LimeGreen   In your form  add this method  protected override void OnPaintBackground PaintEventArgs e        e Graphics FillRectangle Brushes LimeGreen  e ClipRectangle      Be warned  not only is this form fully transparent inside the frame  but you can also click through it  However  it might be cool to draw an image onto it and make the form able to be dragged everywhere to create a custom shaped form

User · Answer

Should it have anything to do with  opacity  of the form   its background   Did you try opacity   0  Also see if this CP article helps

User · Answer

The manner I have used before is to use a wild color  a color no one in their right mind would use  for the BackColor and then set the transparency key to that   this BackColor   Color LimeGreen  this TransparencyKey   Color LimeGreen

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