Translucency, Paint Shop Pro

Any road, I want to make part of a dress panel semi-transparent. I know how to create a mask and make an alpha channel out of that, but I'm not clear on how to find that mask and selectively turn parts of it grey vice black (as I understand you do for transparencies)

I use PSP 8.

I stand ready to be scolded for inability to use search, but I'm feeling a bit dim today. I know full well that there is a link to this somewhere in the stickies, but couldn't find it :/ (found all the Photoshop tutorials, though)

Dunno where theres a tutorial...

I do it this way... I make all my parts in different layers. Any different levels of transparency generally go in a different layer, but not always. Then I merge them all before export, select all, and generate the alpha channel from that.

Well, the problem with that is that while that you aren't generating an alpha channel using the transparency slider. Good for having one layer semivisible underneath another, but what I want is a dress panel with some parts translucent and others opaque.

Well, it depends how you do it, of course, but you actually can achieve exactly the result your talking about through my method, I've done it many times. You just make the translucent parts of your dress in a separate layer.

They don't need to be separate layers, though. As long as your generating the alpha map correctly (selections > load/save > save to alpha, in PSP XI). it should work no matter how the places became transparent... so a low-opacity brush when painting, or using the eraser tool, whatever, all should work.

I guess maybe I don't quite understand what you're trying to do, because so much as I can understand of your post, it's easily doable using the method I've listed here.

Hmmmm....maybe I skipped a step in the alpha upload, then. Wouldn't be the first time. I'll give it another go.

Forgot to mention...

When you select the image to save it to an alpha channel, you have to "pick up" your selection... It has to be what PSP calls a "floating selection", you can't just do "select all".

It's a whole one extra click, though. Just do "select all" then click somewhere on the image to pick it up. Should work. If you forget to pick up your image, your alpha will be wrong.

This is wrong:

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c144/Soulmoon/wrong.jpg

This is right:

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c144/Soulmoon/right.jpg

Maybe it's me, but I've been trying to do transparencies with PSP8 -- even got the update -- but the file save function won't let me save as 32 bit. Result is no transparency when uploaded in world. Am I doing something wrong?

Older versions of PSP don't have a nice "32 Bit" option like PSP XI and Photoshop do, but its still possible. Just be sure you set it to 24 bit, and are saving as uncompressed (It's in the save options), and it should work fine.

Compressed is bad!

I am hoping to try this soon, I have PSP 10.

I was thinking that I could make a mask layer, seeing as PSP10 has the option to make mask from the image by way of opacity.

>crosses fingers<

On PSP 10 there is a function called view overlay, which will allow you to edit an alpha channel, so you can do what you were wanting. Its in the layer menu.