Alpha Channel Primer tutorial

This is the first go at an alpha channel tutorial. It is very simple and is really just to show what an alpha channel is and a very simple way to create one using a selection. I have in mind adding more ways of creating alpha channels -- with more *useful* (albeit complex) examples.

I did steps for achieving the same outcome for both Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro (PSP) since I know many of you don't have Photoshop.

Please provide any feedback you may have -- hopefully we together we can come up with examples and explanations that everyone can understand. Don't be shy! Help me to help you.

Alpha Channel Primer

Thanks,
Nicola



edit: link update

That looks great Nicola

That tutorial will help many I amsure! I do have a question, though. I make alpha channels all the time in PS-CS. I never flatten my images. Am I missing something? everything works fine... ?

A fabulous basic tutorial on alphas. Ty for including PSP as so many of us use it. It would be awesome if someone could do one for including semi-transparent (grey shades) in a PSP alpha as I have yet to figure out how to do this. LOL.

ty Kat

PS is flattening the image for you when you do a "save as"

No problem Kat, I will do that next. Also going to to do one that answers "How do I get rid of the white halo?"

Nicola

No, not really. What I'm sort of working towards though is that if you let PS flatten for you and you don't have a background layer of your own, Photoshop will give you a white one automatically...which causes the dreaded white halo effect. So for the inexperienced they can see first what the flattened image looks like: "Ack! a white background!"


(sorry for the double post...)

I just wanted to add a comment, since I had a very rough time with alphas and PhotoShop 7.

PS7 users will have trouble when trying to save TGA files with alpha channels. Turned out they must download a PS 7.0.1 patch available at the adobe website. If the patch doesn't work on the first run, then you must reinstall PS7 and THEN run the patch.

After that, alphas work fine.

Hope this is useful. I had nightmares before the forums enlightened me...

Very good point, Marker, thanks for mentioning it. In fact, I will add that to my tutorials. I know mentioned it before here (a couple times), but it's important to re-iterate, 7.0 is buggy and should be updated.