ImPDN

[Mij]

Still I guess this feature will not be available in the near future. You know the answer. Irfanview is an image browser not an editor. ;-) Everything that blows up the code without the request of many users will not be implemented by Irfan.

Yes, I do know that problem. I tried to persuade Irfan to include an "Insert image into selection" feature that would allow an image that contained a transparent color to be opened and put into the selection, showing the original image through the transparent parts. I figured that it could largely reuse code that did similar operations in "Paste" and "Insert text into selection" features. I got the "only if requested by many users" reply, which is well nigh impossible to achieve. Even though I have read many posts on the forum asking about how they can merge images in that way, I know that whatever request is posted under "Feature requests" it will never get the support of more than a couple of users.
However I thought that if the extra code and hard work was in a plugin he might be more receptive. Ever hopeful.

[impdf]

Normally I would prefer that the paint plugin does this kind of job. The browser already does too much editing. I guess the feature you are talking about is what the old ms paint does with selections.

bmp2pdn v0.5:
/transparent=0xRRGGBB
Sets all pixels equal to {transparent} to zero (transparent black)
-2: Top/left pixel defines the transparent color, -3: bottom/right

It may be better to allow a tolerance and to reduce the alpha of pixel which are neighbours of transparent pixels.

[Mij]

I agree that it would be better in the paint plugin. I did ask MItaly in the IrfanPaint thread about the possibility of using the color replacer tool in conjunction with clone or "erase using original" which could achieve achieve this same result in a different way but that will clearly never now happen unless someone else takes over development of that plugin.

Sorry, I am going OT. Yes that would be a valuable extra feature of bmp2pdn IMO.

29.08.11 I have now tried v0.5 and the transparent feature works fine. Thanks.

[impdf]

There is good progress in development of ImPDN and the integration in Irfanview.
The following will be supported in the next Irfanview release:
- Multipage view of .PDNs. First page shows the composite image, the following pages the layers.
- Viewing of alpha channels (like for 32-bit pngs)
- The thumbnail view shows the embedded thumbnail to speed up viewing.

Also the tools pdn2bmp and bmp2pdn got an update.
- pdn2bmp allows now to extract the individual layers and channels (R, G, B, and A)
- bmp2pdn allows now antialiasing if a transparent color is used as an alpha channel for a layer