Trans[arency - again!

[MysticEast]

Hi Richard,
I reckoned I had "got transparency sorted"...
However I've just found out something that I need to know and probably only you, Richard can tell me.

I've got a Deck which will look good with either no transparency or with. Problem:-
The Deck is Black and White ONLY. A couple of cards have white in the top left corner, but the rest have black. I want the Black to be the transparent colour.

As they are these Cards showed up as ALL black!
I tried putting in ONE black pixel in the top left corner - no joy. They were no longer ALL black but now while the other cards showed up as White/Transparent, these cards showed up as Black/Transparent - a rather wierd effect.

I tried adding more and more pixels in that top left corner, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36. Finally with 36 pixels the cards displayed as I wanted them - but with a "just noticeable" spot in the corner, when viewed without transparency.
I'd really like to make sure that I get the number of pixels there to an absolute minimum!

The information I would like is the absolutely minimum number and location of pixels that are required for transparency to work...

So one of my favourite phrases "Pretty Please Richard, Please tell me..."

Regards
Mystic East

[MysticEast]

Hi again!

Above I was working with just the Majors, to see how the Deck will look in Aweful-ease. I started with the images at unreduced size of nearly 1,500 pixels height. As I said above it seems as though FOR THAT SIZE an area in the top right corner of 6x6 pixels (36 in total) is required.

Overnight I have reduced those cards to 2/3 size to get the Deck working faster. At very nearly 1,000 pixels in height the Deck is nice and fast and the "required area" seems to be smaller...

Initially the "resampling" by Corel PhotoPaint converted the square of 6x6 pixels to a rectangle of 4x3 pixels (Corel - please note this as a defect!!!)
This rectangle was not enough to trigger transparency correctly, so I edited that to a full square of 4x4 pixels (16 in total). This DID work!

That square is still visible as a black spot when the cards are used without transparency. So I'd still like to know "pretty please!" if the actual area required:-

1) is actually a square shape?
2) includes ALL those 36 pixels for an image of 1,500 pixels height
3) includes ALL those 16 pixels for an image of 1,000 pixels height
4) or if it's actually only registering an area or even just a single pixel slightly AWAY from the absolute corner pixel

Hey - perhaps this is something which Aweful-ease merely inherits from the Windows Rendering Sub-system?? So perhaps you don't even know?
As a developer you might stand a better chance of getting this information out of Redmond...

Regards
MysticEast

[MysticEast]

The saga goes on!

I got the Deck to what I considered was a good state (with "just noticeable" dots) but included the cards without dots for the fastidious...

However:- in further playing with the Deck and doing a few more readings, the same thing was happening again, the two cards were appearing with the opposite transparency - Damn!

I played with this some more and put my noggin into a frenzy of activity to try to sort it.
I edited the cards again and increased the size of the dots from 4x4 to 5x5. When I viewed the Cards in Aweful-ease they seemed perfect again!

BUT - oh no - when doing another spread to test it more, once more it was displaying with those cards with opposite transparency - DOOM DOOM DOOM!

The noggin has worked on this most of the afternoon and the best I can come up with is as follows:-

I THINK that Windows does this transparency lark possibly with just one pixel, but not a pixel of the source image on file, but a DISPLAY pixel on the screen of the computer.

Therefore when looking at either version of the Deck
a) with 4x4 pixel sized dots or
b) with 5x5 pixel sized dots or even the other with
c) 6x6 pixel sized dots
when in Deck "VIewing Mode" - with the Deck sized about half the height of the screen, there is at least one SCREEN PIXEL sized dot there - and transparency works!
But when using the Deck for a reading, spreads generally size the Deck a fair bit smaller to get all the cards on screen - so the pixels in the two card image FILES ( 4x4 or 5x5 or 6x6 ) may not be enough to account for one SCREEN PIXEL.

Have a look at the Deck, while I leave it on the share for a while. You'll see how wierd this can be... It's been another learning experence!

Meanwhile I will take another look at editing those damn pixels till I get it to work with the smaller card size, as used in many spreads.

Regards MysticEast

P.S. please also note - I tried to put another note on the Deck on the share, to warn downloaders of the issue, but the Deck Share simply doesn't let me add any other note... It seems like I'll have to Unshare it and share again to add that comment.

[MysticEast]

Hi once more!

Research and editing of files done, here are the results of the Finish Jury...

The 4x4 = 16 pixel size dot works poerfectly well with a Card displayed at about half screen height (my screen size is 1280x800 on my laptop).

The 6x6 = 36 pixel size works with spreads that give cards a little less than 1/3 of the height of the screen (one's I use mostly).

A massive 8x8 = 64 pixels is needed for transparency to work for a spread such as the Celtic (on my screen)

I suggest that on screens larger than mine you might POSSIBLY be able to downgrade one of those levels to get "Minimum Sized Dot"???

I also suggest that going much smaller with trasparent cards such as these (a very ARTY Deck!) is probably not worthwhile???

So:- I will leave it to tomorrow, but then I will take down the existing Deck and replace it with a new Deck with alternate cards to cover all those possibilities (and a note to try to help people understand!)

Regards MysticEast

[MysticEast]

Hi once more,

Original "faulty" Deck now taken down and replaced with "Wonderful - All Singing All Dancing" replacement.

I've shared it still with Transparency enabled, so you can see the nice effect.
I've shared it with those alternate named cards for 19.png and 55.png
As shared it has the 6x6 = 36 pixels dot.
I also corrected the fact that the Walpaper Background was pointing outside the Deck, so would not have showed before.
So as shared it has the "Sunburst over the Ocean" as the Background. I reckon this or the Green Baize works well with transparency enabled...

So what are you waiting for - go get the new version!.......

Regards
MysticEast

[Programmer]

Excellent! Thanks for sharing