Problem when saving .tga files

I'm posting this on behalf of a friend who is way more experienced in PS than I am. She currently uses CS3 but had the same problem in CS2.

Basically, when she tries to save a file as a .tga, the 24 bit option is greyed out and she has to save it as 32 bit (or use another format). This happens even when no alpha channel is present.

I on the other hand, the Compleat PS Newb, have no such problem and neither of us can work out what setting she might be using that would cause this.

Does anyone have an idea why this is happening?

Thanks for any help,

Isobel

Hi! I have no idea what she might be doing. I just tried everything I could think of, and nothing did that.

Can she possibly send me a copy of one of her files that is showing this problem?

And why isn't she posting herself, may I ask?

This file worked for me and many others:

http://never30.com/evolve/downloads.asp

Hope this helps!
~Maddy

NOOOOOOOOOO!

People, that's the file that we're trying to get rid of. It embeds the .tga, causes the file to be unreadable in many apps (and might, at any time, in SL) and is really, really, really, really, really not necessary now that we can use .png files.

Please, please, please, please please don't destroy your perfectly good copy of PS by putting that hideous, broken thing in there.

Adobe regretted it, and replaced it with a plug-in that makes a working Alpha, within weeks of releasing that thing, because it was causing so many problems for so many people.

If you cannot be bothered to make a real Alpha (which takes less than 2 seconds) for some bizarre reason, then, please, just use .png files. Don't cripple your copy of PS by using this thing.

MadameG Zagato, with all due respect, have you read the stuff that Chosen has posted about what that thing can do to your files?

Alpha channels are EASY to make, as long as you don't have a corrupted copy of PS (which is what I suspect in the case of the poster's friend.)

Just stop thinking that they aren't, or that they are some kind of Layer Mask, and you'll find that you can make them in seconds.

EDIT: A post was in this thread, suggesting the use of an old experimental TGA saver plugin. The author of that post has since removed it, and asked that I edit my reply to reflect that. I'm leaving in the reasons not to use the plugin, in case anyone needs the information, but I've removed all personal reference to the author. /EDIT

If you install it, you will FUBAR your Photoshop. Stay away from it at all cost.

That utility was only in existence officially for 3 months, and it was by far the biggest blunder in Adobe's history. Adobe realized their mistake almost instantly, and corrected the problem with the free 7.0.1 upgrade, but unfortunately the damage still lingers (as is evidenced in this thread). Files created with created with that utility suffer the following problems:

1. They will have visual artifacts in them which will be impossible to correct, the most common of which is a white halo surrounding the opaque parts of the image.

2. The files will be incompatible with most graphics applications. Instead of real alpha channels, which have been a staple of the graphics industry for decades, and so can be understood by nearly all graphics programs, those 7.0-style files contain a proprietary element called an "embedded alpha", which almost no program on Earth can read. It's only by an utter miracle of conicidental timing that SL can read those files at all. The relevant part of SL happened to have been under development at during that short 3-month period when PS 7.0 was current.

3. People who use the embedded alpha work flow do so primarily because they mistakenly think it's a time saver. In truth, it is not a significant time saver at all since making an alpha channel only takes a few seconds at most. Learning to use alpha channels might not be intuitive for most people at first, but really, once you learn how to do it, it's incredibly quick and easy. It's not rocket science.

4. For images with complicated transparency levels, like stained glass windows, for example, the embedded alpha work flow actually makes the process take MUCH longer than it takes to make a real alpha channel.

5. Very importantly, embedded alpha work flow encourages destructive habits. By disallowing you the ability to create and edit alpha channels properly, it ends up costing you an enormous amount of control and flexibility. There are countless situations in which working directly on the alpha channel itself allows you to do things you could never otherwise do in any reasonable amount of time, if at all.

6. Once installed, that 7.0 plugin effectively destroys your ability to every again work properly with real alpha channels should you ever choose to do so. Even if you remove it, PS won't behave entirely properly afterwards. The only recourse is to completely uninstall PS and then reinstall it all over again. What a pain.

7. Files containing embedded alphas are prone to sudden, irreversible data corruption. I have no idea why, but they often end up with colored lines spontaneously appearing across any white space in the image. Once that happens, the file is toast. You can manually erase the lines, but as soon as you close the file and reopen it, they come back.


So, once again, DO NOT INSTALL THAT FILE!!! It is nothing but trouble.

Now, can we please, please, please, please never speak of it again?


If you're really deadset against using alpha channels, then instead of borking your Photoshop with that horrendously dangerous plugin, just use the PNG format instead of TGA. PNG supports both alpha transparency and simple transparency. With PNG's simple transparency, you work entirely with WYSIWYG, and you never have to worry about any of the problems associated with embedded alphas.




My guess would be your friend probably installed the above mentioned file, or something similar to it, and then maybe removed it. While the file was present, PS was reporgrammed to automatically make every TGA file 32-bit if it's got even so much a single visibly transparent pixel in it. If the file were then removed, PS could well still be stuck in that mode without realizing it. Because it doesn't know it's been so neutered, it prompts you to make choices, but because the proper functionality was destroyed by that plugin, not all the choices are actually doable anymore. Hence 24-bit is grayed out. I've seen stranger things than that happen in the aftermath of that plugin.

If that's not what it is, then I'm stumped. Either way, uninstalling PS and reinstalling it would probably be the best thing to do at this point.

Hi,

The file has always worked well for me. I have never had any problems using it so maybe that's why I missed the announncement. I'll read what Chosen has to say. eep Sorry...looks like I got to the party late again.

I don't have any of the issues that you list Chosen. Is there a link to this info somewhere where ths was announced prior to today? I'd like to be sure that others I know who are using it are aware of it as well. Perhaps they may be experiencing some of the issues you describe. But obviously, the problem does not affect everyone who uses the file lol.

Thanks a zillion!
~Maddy

That file was only released to fix a problem with PS 7.0, didn't work as designed, and got fixed in PS 7.0.1

Lord knows what it'll do to other versions of PhotoShop.

"Note: The Photoshop 7.0.1 update contains all functionality included in the revised Targa plug-in, so downloading and using the revised plug-in is unnecessary with Photoshop 7.0.1."

From: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1544

Thanks Robin, I'll ask her to do that.

The only reason I asked on her behalf is that she's rarely in the forums and yesterday I saw a related question that reminded me of her issue so I did it while I remembered!

Isobel

Thanks, Chosen It's possible she installed this but unlikely because she is very competent in PS generally and certainly understands how to create a normal alpha channel. I'll ask her though, just in case she's been led astray somewhere!

The RL company she was working for did insist that their employees uploaded textures as .jpg "because they load faster" but as far as I know her .tga problem predates her employment with them so they're probably not responsible for it

Isobel

Is this a company doing business in SL? If so, somebody ought to tell them that everything in SL is saved as JPEG2000, not JPEG or TGA. The actual source file never gets uploaded. The instant you hit the upload button, the image is copied to JPEG2000, and then the copy is uploaded. The source format makes no difference whatsoever to the speed at which the JPEG2000 will load.

Actually, I should take that last part back. If you really want to get technical, textures sourced from JPEG's actually come out slightly larger than those sourced from TGA, so they'll load slightly slower. Why does this happen? It's because JPEG is a lossy format, which ALWAYS contains visual artifacts. When the image is copied to JPEG2000, the artifacts are copied as well, and the resulting JPEG2000 comes out slightly larger than it would if the artifacts were not present. The difference is generally only a few bytes worth, so it's not worth talking about, but just for the sake of accuracy, that's what happens.

I'd advise your friend to share this information with her company. The only thing they're accopmplishing by insisting on JPEG is lower quality imagery and slightly larger server-side files. They're not benefiting in any way, shape, or form.

If, on the other hand, they're not talking about SL textures, but about images for Web pages, then they would be correct that JPEG would be a good format to use. TGA has no place on the Web, nor does any other uncompressed format. If that company plans on doing business in SL, they need to be educated to the fact that SL doesn't work like the Web.