How can I set the opacity or transparency of a Panel in WinForms?

Question

I was wondering how to change or modify the transparency of a Panel in C#, not the whole form, but the panel only.. I've seen many C# tutorials on Opacity, but its for the Form. im looking for how it could be possible with the Panel only. Thank You!

Solution 1

Yes, opacity can only work on top-level windows. It uses a hardware feature of the video adapter, that doesn't support child windows, like Panel. The only top-level Control derived class in Winforms is Form.

Several of the 'pure' Winform controls, the ones that do their own painting instead of letting a native Windows control do the job, do however support a transparent BackColor. Panel is one of them. It uses a trick, it asks the Parent to draw itself to produce the background pixels. One side-effect of this trick is that overlapping controls doesn't work, you only see the parent pixels, not the overlapped controls.

This sample form shows it at work:

public partial class Form1 : Form {
    public Form1() {
        InitializeComponent();
        this.BackColor = Color.White;
        panel1.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(25, Color.Black);
    }
    protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e) {
        e.Graphics.DrawLine(Pens.Yellow, 0, 0, 100, 100);
    }
}

If that's not good enough then you need to consider stacking forms on top of each other. Like this.

Notable perhaps is that this restriction is lifted in Windows 8. It no longer uses the video adapter overlay feature and DWM (aka Aero) cannot be turned off anymore. Which makes opacity/transparency on child windows easy to implement. Relying on this is of course future-music for a while to come. Windows 7 will be the next XP :)

Solution 2

For whoever is still looking for a totally transparent panel, I found a nice solution in this blog by William Smash who in turn has taken it from Tobias Hertkorn on his T# blog. I thought its worth posting it as an answer here.

C# code:

public class TransparentPanel : Panel
{
    protected override CreateParams CreateParams 
    {            
        get {
            CreateParams cp =  base.CreateParams;
            cp.ExStyle |= 0x00000020; // WS_EX_TRANSPARENT
            return cp;
            }
    }
    protected override void OnPaintBackground(PaintEventArgs e) 
    {
        //base.OnPaintBackground(e);
    }
}

VB.Net code:

Public Class TransparentPanel
Inherits Panel
    Protected Overrides ReadOnly Property CreateParams() As System.Windows.Forms.CreateParams
        Get
            Dim cp As CreateParams = MyBase.CreateParams
            cp.ExStyle = cp.ExStyle Or &H20 ''#WS_EX_TRANSPARENT
            Return cp
        End Get
    End Property
    Protected Overrides Sub OnPaintBackground(ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs)
    ''#MyBase.OnPaintBackground(e)
    End Sub
End Class

Solution 3

Based on information found at http://www.windows-tech.info/3/53ee08e46d9cb138.php, I was able to achieve a translucent panel control using the following code.

public class TransparentPanel : Panel
{
    protected override CreateParams CreateParams
    {
        get
        {
            var cp = base.CreateParams;
            cp.ExStyle |= 0x00000020; // WS_EX_TRANSPARENT

            return cp;
        }
    }

    protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e) =>
        e.Graphics.FillRectangle(new SolidBrush(this.BackColor), this.ClientRectangle);
}

The caveat is that any controls that are added to the panel have an opaque background. Nonetheless, the translucent panel was useful for me to block off parts of my WinForms application so that users focus was shifted to the appropriate area of the application.

Solution 4

Panel with opacity:

public class GlassyPanel : Panel
{
    const int WS_EX_TRANSPARENT = 0x20;  

    int opacity = 50;

    public int Opacity
    {
        get
        {
            return opacity;
        }
        set
        {
            if (value < 0 || value > 100) throw new ArgumentException("Value must be between 0 and 100");
            opacity = value;
        }
    }

    protected override CreateParams CreateParams
    {
        get
        {
            var cp = base.CreateParams;
            cp.ExStyle = cp.ExStyle | WS_EX_TRANSPARENT;

            return cp;
        }
    }

    protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e)
    {
        using (var b = new SolidBrush(Color.FromArgb(opacity * 255 / 100, BackColor)))
        {
            e.Graphics.FillRectangle(b, ClientRectangle);
        }

        base.OnPaint(e);
    }
}

Solution 5

Try this:

panel1.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(100, 88, 44, 55);

change alpha(A) to get desired opacity.

View more solutions

Comments

[Gaff]

For those of you who aren't too good with the 0-255 color schematics, you can use this: panel1.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(50, Color.Green);

[user276648]

I can't seem to make it work. Changing the alpha layer makes the color of the Panel darker or lighter, but I can't ever see the controls behind it. Am I missing something?

[f1wade]

This is great, 1 Question: is there a way to shade the form? So we currently have a completely transparent panel, but can we shade it slightly so that the user can be focused to a part we define?

[f1wade]

Ive applied this panel to a form and onPaintBackground i draw the cliprect in opaque color, but underneath i have other controls on the form, which seem to overdraw this new panel, even though the panel is put on the form controls and my other custom controls are put on another panel. do I need to do anything specific in my custom controls to allow drawing over the top?

[sampathsris]

This does not work. See this answer.

[kjbartel]

This does not work for me. The panel is transparent and does not have the color shown from the OnPaint. Are you sure that's the whole class?

[kjbartel]

Ok I got it to sort of work. But it only worked if I had absolutely no controls on the panel. And all controls behind the panel still display pretty much normally so it effectively just tints the background under the panel. Which is basically useless as an "overlay".

[MyDaftQuestions]

This DOES work! I've just used it, making my Panel semi transparent on my splash screen

[56ka]

I've posted a comparison of renders on Windows 7 and old Windows 2003 stackoverflow.com/a/32075941/1529139

[Steven Spyrka]

And also on Win8 and Higher. From MSDN Windows 8: The WS_EX_LAYERED style is supported for top-level windows and child windows. Previous Windows versions support WS_EX_LAYERED only for top-level windows.