Window tint disaster

Can someone please help me, I have tried over and over to create alpa channels 10, 25,50, and 75 to put in windows, but when I upload them they are either white or grey. I downloaded the window frame to put a alpha layer on top, but I seem to be doing something wrong.

Make sure the translucent part is grey or black, not white, in the alpha channel.
Make sure you save it as a 32 bit targa.

There is a sticky about alpha channels

Its better if you make the windows a diffused color like a hazy shade of white, then use a script to change the transparency in steps (up to 90%) - much easier and cleaner anyway.

It sounds as if the basic challenge is confusion about the difference between channels and layers. There is no such thing as an alpha layer. If you have just been creating a window shape on a layer and filling it with a shade of gray, it will look like a gray rectangle when you upload it. You have to actually create an alpha channel. I'm assuming that you are using Photoshop .... so the quickest way to create the alpha channel you want is to make a mask layer --- a layer that is filled with black and has a hole cut in it where you want the window. Select all pixels, then Select >> Save Selection. That will create an alpha channel. You can see it's there by clicking the "channels" tab and looking for the minature picture of it next to the word "Alpha."

Assuming that you still have all pixels selected, choose Select >> Inverse to be sure that you will be working with the window area (not the wall around it). Then, open the Alpha channel itself (Channels tab, then click the eye icon next to Alpha on and the one next to RGB off) and fill the selected area -- the window -- with gray. The lighter the gray, the more opaque the window will be, so a 25% gray fill will create a very cloudy window while a 75% gray will make one that's really quite clear.

Remember to turn off your mask layer so it doesn't show, and then save the file as 32 bit TGA and upload. It should work like a dream.

As the previous poster suggested, the absolute easiest solution is not to mess with most of this at all. Instead, in Photoshop, fill a layer with white. You can texture it a bit by applying a noise filter and then blurring it if you like. Then, choose the channels tab and create a new channel by clicking the tiny icon at the bottom -- the one that looks like a rectangle with a circle in it. Open the new alpha channel, which will be entirely white, and then fill the whole thing with 25% gray. Save as 32 bit TGA and upload.

You have just created a pane of frosted glass -- very frosted. You can change its opacity in the Edit >> Textures panel in SL to make it as translucent as you like, thus saving yourself the trouble and upload cost of making several panes of glass with different opacities.