Control Button Pictures - a subtle difference?

[Jeff]

I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts on this stumper...

The command button bitmap pictures that Microsoft supplies with Access have an apparent "transparency" color (i.e. the surounding unused pixels of the Airplane picture appear as the same color as the button-- as defined by MS Window's Display Scheme Property).

On the other hand, a custom bitmap that the developer specifies (with a path and file name) cannot have this "transparency" feature. As an example, if I develop my Access DB with MS Window's Display Scheme set to "Desert", I can create my custom picture on a TAN background and everything looks great. But if my DB customer prefers the "Eggplant" Display Scheme setting, the TAN background sticks out like a novice programmer!

There must be a way to achieve the same "tranparency" effect that the canned pictures seem to enjoy... I have yet to discover how.

Thanks for any help.

P.S. I've tried using an .ico file (which supports transparencies) but the transparency aspect is stripped from the file as it is placed into the command button. Embedded vs. Linked also doesn't help.

 

[Jeff]

To anyone interested:

I discovered my errored interpretation of the problem listed above.

The key IS to use an ICON file instead of a standard (Paint) bitmap. When the display settings are changed, the icon file will still display the old transparency color (not good)... but as soon as you close the form and open it up again (and any later openings) the new color settings are applied and the picture/transparency looks perfect.

 

[John_Hazen]

I have had similar troubles, I have all cutom bitmaps and some are transparent and some are not. These are on tabbed control tabs. Even worse I just bought a Dell with a Nvidia tnt2 video card and now 7 out of 8 pictures have disappeared on the new machine only. There must be something different about the way Access puts pictures on tab controls because the bmp pictures on all my regular controls still work fine.