Make Disabled Menu and Toolbar Images look better?

Question

Please see the attached screenshot which illustrates a TToolBar from one of my programs:

Answer 1

I submitted a QC report for a related issue over a year ago, but that was for menus. I've never seen this for TToolbar since it is a wrapper to the common control and the drawing is handled by Windows.

However, the images you are seeing are clearly as result of the VCL calling TImageList.Draw and passing Enabled=False – nothing else looks that bad! Are you 100% sure this really is a TToolbar?

The fix will surely be to avoid TImageList.Draw and call ImageList_DrawIndirect with the ILS_SATURATE.

You may need to modify some VCL source. First find the location where the toolbar is being custom drawn and call this routine instead of the calls to TImageList.Draw.

procedure DrawDisabledImage(DC: HDC; ImageList: TCustomImageList; Index, X, Y: Integer);
var
  Options: TImageListDrawParams;
begin
  ZeroMemory(@Options, SizeOf(Options));
  Options.cbSize := SizeOf(Options);
  Options.himl := ImageList.Handle;
  Options.i := Index;
  Options.hdcDst := DC;
  Options.x := X;
  Options.y := Y;
  Options.fState := ILS_SATURATE;
  ImageList_DrawIndirect(@Options);
end;

An even better fix would be to work out why the toolbar is being custom drawn and find a way to let the system do it.

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EDIT 1

I've looked at the Delphi source code and I'd guess that you are custom drawing the toolbar, perhaps because it has a gradient. I never even knew that TToolbar could handle custom drawing but I'm just a plain vanilla kind of guy!

Anyway, I can see code in TToolBar.GradientDrawButton calling the TImageList.Draw so I think the explanation above is on the right track.

I'm fairly sure that calling my DrawDisabledImage function above will give you better results. If could find a way to make that happen when you call TImageList.Draw then that would, I suppose, be the very best fix since it would apply wholesale.

EDIT 2

Combine the function above with @RRUZ's answer and you have an excellent solution.