I am targeting google chrome. Is it possible to draw transparent images on a canvas? By transparent I mean the drawing the entire image at something like 50% opacity.
The canvas element has a global alpha attribute that lets you apply partial transparency to anything you draw.
You can do this using the globalAlpha property, like this:
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<body>
<canvas height="100" width="100" id="myCanvas"></canvas>
<script>
var canvas = document.getElementById("myCanvas");
var context = canvas.getContext("2d");
context.globalAlpha = 0.5;
var myImage = new Image();
myImage.src = "someImage.jpg";
myImage.onload = function()
{
context.drawImage(myImage, 0, 0, 100, 100);
};
</script>
</body>
</html>
And yes, it does work with images. Verified with IE 9, FF 5, Safari 5, and Chrome 12 on Win 7.
It's possible if you iterate thru the canvas' image-data and set the alpha value manually, then export the transparent image with the canvas.toDataURL method and insert it into another canvas.