Fade in an alpha-blended PNG form in Delphi

Question

I asked a question about this some years back when Vista was first released, but never resolved the problem and shelved it as something to consider later.

I have a splash screen that I went to great effort to make look great. It's a 32bpp alpha-blended PNG. I have some code (which I can dig up if required!) that works great under Windows XP or under Vista+ when desktop composition is turned off. However, under Vista+ all the transparent parts are black, destroying everything that looks great about it!

So, my question is this: as anyone been able to display a 32bpp alpha-blended PNG as a splash screen in a way that works both with and without desktop composition activated? I'm not adverse to using third-party components if required, free or otherwise.

Ideally, this would work in Delphi 7.

Update: Besides the answers below, which work very well, I found that the TMS TAdvSmoothSplashScreen component also handles this task very well, if somewhat more complex.

Answer 1

Tim, I just tried this on Vista/D2007 with 'Windows Classic' theme selected:

Alpha Blended Splash Screen in Delphi - Part 2 http://melander.dk/articles/alphasplash2/2/

no black background that I could see... it still looks great.

Answer 2

The article Bob S links to gives the correct answer. Since that article contains quite a bit extra information that you actually need, here is the form/unit I create through it (Note that you'll need the GraphicEx library from here:

unit Splash2Form;

interface

    uses
    Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics, Controls, Forms,
    Dialogs, ExtCtrls, GraphicEx;

type
    TSplash2 = class(TForm)
    private
        { Private declarations }
    procedure PreMultiplyBitmap(Bitmap: TBitmap);
    public
        constructor Create(Owner: TComponent);override;
        { Public declarations }
        procedure CreateParams(var Params: TCreateParams);override;
    procedure Execute;
  end;

var
  Splash2: TSplash2;

implementation

{$R *.dfm}

{ TSplash2 }

constructor TSplash2.Create(Owner: TComponent);
begin
  inherited;
  Brush.Style := bsClear;
end;

procedure TSplash2.CreateParams(var Params: TCreateParams);
begin
    inherited;
end;

procedure TSplash2.Execute;
var exStyle: DWORD;
    BitmapPos: TPoint;
  BitmapSize: TSize;
  BlendFunction: TBlendFunction;
  PNG: TPNGGraphic;
  Stream: TResourceStream;
begin
  // Enable window layering
  exStyle := GetWindowLongA(Handle, GWL_EXSTYLE);
  if (exStyle and WS_EX_LAYERED = 0) then
    SetWindowLong(Handle, GWL_EXSTYLE, exStyle or WS_EX_LAYERED);

  PNG := TPNGGraphic.Create;
  try

      Stream := TResourceStream.Create(HInstance, 'SPLASH', RT_RCDATA);
      try
          PNG.LoadFromStream(Stream);
    finally
        Stream.Free;
        end;

    PreMultiplyBitmap(PNG);

      ClientWidth := PNG.Width;
    ClientHeight := PNG.Height;

      BitmapPos := Point(0, 0);
    BitmapSize.cx := ClientWidth;
      BitmapSize.cy := ClientHeight;

      // Setup alpha blending parameters
    BlendFunction.BlendOp := AC_SRC_OVER;
      BlendFunction.BlendFlags := 0;
    BlendFunction.SourceConstantAlpha := 255;
      BlendFunction.AlphaFormat := AC_SRC_ALPHA;

    // ... and action!
      UpdateLayeredWindow(Handle, 0, nil, @BitmapSize, PNG.Canvas.Handle,
      @BitmapPos, 0, @BlendFunction, ULW_ALPHA);

      Show;

  finally
    PNG.Free;
  end;
end;

procedure TSplash2.PreMultiplyBitmap(Bitmap: TBitmap);
var
  Row, Col: integer;
  p: PRGBQuad;
  PreMult: array[byte, byte] of byte;
begin
  // precalculate all possible values of a*b
  for Row := 0 to 255 do
    for Col := Row to 255 do
    begin
      PreMult[Row, Col] := Row*Col div 255;
      if (Row <> Col) then
        PreMult[Col, Row] := PreMult[Row, Col]; // a*b = b*a
    end;

  for Row := 0 to Bitmap.Height-1 do
  begin
    Col := Bitmap.Width;
    p := Bitmap.ScanLine[Row];
    while (Col > 0) do
    begin
      p.rgbBlue := PreMult[p.rgbReserved, p.rgbBlue];
      p.rgbGreen := PreMult[p.rgbReserved, p.rgbGreen];
      p.rgbRed := PreMult[p.rgbReserved, p.rgbRed];
      inc(p);
      dec(Col);
    end;
  end;
end;

end.