AGOL no longer supports transparent thumbnails for groups

[cbp-geus]

We have an issue when uploading new thumbnails for our groups on AGOL where they no longer support transparent background for PNG-files. Instead they are shown with a greyish background color. It has worked before and our previous AGOL groups still have their transparent thumbnails. The thumbnails are 220x220 with 32 bit depth and only a size around 17 KB. Below is a screenshot with the same transparent thumbnails. The previous uploaded in 2020 is transparent, but the other one does not work even though it is the same identical file? 

[Katie_Clark]

Hmmm, this is a longshot, but is the extension the same case in both versions? (i.e. PNG vs. png)

[cbp-geus]

Hi @Katie_Clark,

Thank you for your response. Yes, the file has the same extension and are exact the same file version in both examples. It is the same file I have uploaded again, but this time its transparency didn't go through.

[Saka_support]

Hello,

You can resize your thumbnails to the suggested size/ratio or save your transparent PNG images in a different format. Can you please try to modify the image to a square pixel size? (for example, 400 x 400 and 1500 x 1500)

[cbp-geus]

Hi @Saka_support,

Thank you for your suggestion. I tried to change the thumbnail image to a square pixel size of 400 x 400, which AGOL also recommend for best results, but unfortunately it is the same result. I get a greyish background color instead of the transparency. I also tried to change it to 1200 x 1200, even though the resolution is not fitted for that size, but again with the same result.

I'm using Adobe Photoshop to change the thumbnail. I have tried to save it with a PNG-24 Transparency and a PNG-8 with web color optimization.

[Saka_support]

Thank you for sharing this!

Based on my research, this seems to be an expected behavior, unfortunately. It is definitely possible that Esri Support Services can log an enhancement request for you. At the same time, what worked for me was when I resized the image to 400x400 and saved the group logo (image), the background automatically became white (rather than transparent). This was with Windows Paint. In that way, when you use the newly resized image with white background, it is no longer gray and achieves the end goal. 

After choosing to have white background:

I understand that this is not ideal but we can have a white/transparent-looking background through this.

[cbp-geus]

Thank you Saka, for sharing this proposal. Unfortunately this is not ideal. What we are hoping for is to have a transparent thumbnail as the white background does not look nice when the user are looking at the groups from different web apps or field maps with dark color theme.

[coolflippers]

I am having a similar issue with creating a map layout. Logos have transparent backgrounds in other application, from web browsers to adobe to powerpoint, but not in Arc.