Transparent Control Over Picturebox

Transparent control over PictureBox

The Label control supports transparency well. It is just that the designer won't let you place the label correctly. The PictureBox control is not a container control so the Form becomes the parent of the label. So you see the form's background.

It is easy to fix by adding a bit of code to the form constructor. You'll need to change the label's Parent property and recalculate it's Location since it is now relative to the picture box instead of the form. Like this:

    public Form1() {
        InitializeComponent();
        var pos = this.PointToScreen(label1.Location);
        pos = pictureBox1.PointToClient(pos);
        label1.Parent = pictureBox1;
        label1.Location = pos;
        label1.BackColor = Color.Transparent;
    }

Looks like this at runtime:

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Another approach is to solve the design-time problem. That just takes an attribute. Add a reference to System.Design and add a class to your project, paste this code:

using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Windows.Forms.Design;    // Add reference to System.Design

[Designer(typeof(ParentControlDesigner))]
class PictureContainer : PictureBox {}

Transparency of picture box

You are correct in your assumption.

Transparency in winforms does not mean that the object is actually transparent. Instead, it means that it will display it's parent object instead of it's background, including it's background, images and text, but not including any other controls on it, hence your problem.

Since the parent control of your top most picture box is not and can not be the other picture boxes, the fact that your top most picture box have a transparent background will not help.

Unfortunately, using the form's TransparencyKey property will also not help for this. (It will make the selected color transparent, but will yield unexpected (and usually undesired) results.

In order to achieve your goal, you will have to follow OneFineDay's advice in the comments, and use Graphics to draw the image yourself.

Fortunately, this is very easy to do:

Public Sub DrawImage(Image as Image, Location As Point)
    Using(Dim g as Graphics = Me.CreateGraphics())
        g.DrawImage(Image, Location)
    EndUsing
End Sub

How to make picturebox transparent?

One way to do this is by changing the parent of the overlapping picture box to the PictureBox over which it is lapping. Since the Visual Studio designer doesn't allow you to add a PictureBox to a PictureBox, this will have to be done in your code (Form1.cs) and within the Intializing function:

public Form1()
{
    InitializeComponent();
    pictureBox7.Controls.Add(pictureBox8);
    pictureBox8.Location = new Point(0, 0);
    pictureBox8.BackColor = Color.Transparent;
}

Just change the picture box names to what ever you need. This should return:

WinForms picturebox not transparent

It is quite easy all you have to do is make the canvas PictureBox of the same size and set its location also the same as your first picture box. Then set canvas PictureBox back colour to transparent. Now set your first PictureBox as the parent of canvas PictureBox.

You can write the below code on the form load event.

pictureBoxCanvas.Size = pictureBox1.Size;
pictureBoxCanvas.Location = pictureBox1.Location;
pictureBoxCanvas.BackColor = Color.Transparent;
pictureBoxCanvas.BringToFront();
pictureBoxCanvas.Parent = this.pictureBox1;

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