Siemens HMI transparent backgrounds on images...

Hi,

I am trying to layout my HMI with various graphics I have drawn up outside of the HMI - I want to have a custom background as well but when I copy and paste my graphics out of Photoshop, the transparency gets removed and my graphics end up with a white background.

Does anybody know if it is possible to stop this or remove the white background once in TIA? I am running V13 SP2.

Thanks,

There is no "transparancy" layer in the graphics in TIA. It is just a simple bitmap after it is imported into TIA.
To get transparancy, you have to set aside a special color that is to be interpreted as transparant. You specify this for each usage of the graphic. But chose one color that is to be used for transparancy everywhere (and for nothing else of course), and is distinctive - bright orange for example. Dont chose white or grey or any other color that you might actually use in any image.
When you create the graphics you have to use the color for where the image has to be transparant.

Thanks Jesper - I found another way of doing it in the end...

I have a copy of photoshop so I placed my graphic in there, saved it as a PNG with a transparent background and then imported it.

What I was doing first was, creating the graphic with a transparent background, selecting it, press copy and then pasting it into the HMI. This was losing the transparency.

If I exported (saved) the image out of Photoshop as a PNG file, and then imported the saved file on the HMI it works.

Cheers,

Oh, by the way. Avoid plastering the background with a huge bitmap. Or use any big bitmaps at all ! And worst is big bitmaps with lots of transparancy.
It is not a good idea. The panels, especially the basic panels have next to no graphics power at all.
The runtime application will respond very slowly when it has to process big bitmaps with transparancy.

DLMUK said:

If I exported (saved) the image out of Photoshop as a PNG file, and then imported the saved file on the HMI it works.

Click to expand...

I didnt know until now that WinCC supported PNG transparancy.
Good to know.