POI icons "see through" color

You might try this:

Instead of using "red"

Best to use 256 color palette with standard web safe colors
The color 'magenta' (RGB R:255, G:0, B:255 [#ff00ff ] is treated as a transparent color)

I believe it also may work for your Tom Tom -- although I can't test it -- but you can.

Gary Hayman
Garmin GPS Tricks, Tips, Work Arounds, Hints, Secrets & Ideas
http://snipurl.com/garmin_gps_tricks

I only have MS Paint that I have been using and have noticed that I have to save the file as 16 color bitmap with the transparency color at 255,0,255. When I save it as 256 color bitmap or 24-bit bitmap it will not work for me.

Thank you for your comments, but they didn't help.

I tried both magenta (255,0,255) and red (255,0,0) and 16 color bitmaps and 256 colors with no success. I also updated my TomTom's software to the latest 8.010. Any further hints?

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/2702

http://www.tomtom.com/lib/doc/TomTomTips/index.html?creating...

After doing what others described (saving in .bmp with the same magenta backing of FF00FF in 24x24), I too was perplexed when all the ones I created or optimized came out showing the magenta on my nuvi. But since one that I hadn't touched did not show the magenta, I realized it had to do with something in the format saved. Sure enough, all the ones that showed magenta that I didn't touch were in 256 colors. For that matter, all the ones I retrieved from here were 256, magenta or not.

I went thru six different programs on my Mac. Five will export the right file size and format, however they don't give you the choice to save in 16, 256, thousands or millions of colors. The one that I found that does do that, AppleWorks, won't allow any files smaller than 36x36!!! I even tried using AppleWorks to convert to 256 and then changing that same file to .bmp with the other programs, but they automatically revert or open it to either millions or to a .pict file! AARGH!

Is there an easy program for Mac (may some free download) that will save .bmp's in at least 24x24 AND ALSO in 256 colors??? I have plenty of photo-editing apps and this is the first time I could not perform what I wanted to with any, even many complex projects. Thanks in advance!

Have you tried GIMP? http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/

UPDATE: Thanks for the tip, bwarden, but there was ONE other program I forgot about (although I don't know how): Graphics Converter. The free basic version has already been sitting on my Macs and routinely updated for a long time. It does a lot, including everything I need to convert to and from every image format, color depth and all other properties. I just finished getting all my files converted and in order for POI Loader. Hope it works this time!

UPDATE: Well, it looks like most of the magenta backing icons STILL did not load transparently. A couple did, although you can see some traces of magenta around it. I don't understand what the real trick to all this is, or why a couple worked and the rest didn't. If I had to, I would rather have them with a white background then magenta of course. Icons with white lettering on a dark background look fine as a solid square, but logos with dark lettering are nice without the white background. All I can think to do is to re-open the newly converted 8-bit 24x24 files in another utility to double check the magenta color is still the same FF00FF. I already verified they are all now seen as 8-bit (256 colors) in other programs. Any other ideas? ...anybody???

UPDATE: Well, not only did I find the free Graphics Editor program indispensible for converting any attribute or format of an image to another, I realized that the ones that did not show transparently on the nuvi were either still in millions (not 256) or else had a slight magenta variant (FF08FF for instance). All that checked out on both counts displayed transparently, albeit with the annoying magenta artifacts which make the image look amateurish and not very clean. I guess I will have to toy with the worst ones and try to change every single pixel to perfect magenta FF00FF. ...That should be "fun".