Paint Shop Pro

Hello all,

I am extremely new to world and thought I would have a go at making some clothing. I am having a real nightmare with alpha channels and all the tutorials I have found have been using photoshop.

Does anyone have / know about a psp tutorial for creating clothes & alpha channels

Many thanks

Yes, good question. I would like to know the answer to this, too.

psp is ez to make alphas (im using psp
1-select the item you want an alpha for (use magic wand with shift to multiselect)
2-pulldown selections>Load/Save selections>save selection to alpha channel
thats it you made alpha,
you can check the alpha with:
3-pulldown Image>delete alpha channel
if there is more than one in there delete the one you dont want
or just hit cancle button
4-Save as .TGA ( i use tga it saves the alpha with image)

-LW

Thank you for your reply I am also getting some in world help as I am pretty sure I am probably missing a few steps.

One other thing tho I am using PSP9 and I read that you had to save as a .tga no compression in 32 bit... psp9 only offers me 24bit in the options.

Is there anything that can be done?

Thanks in advance

hmmm i save my tga and they are 24bit and work fine with alphas
-LW

I can help you, IM me in the world!

I gave a detailed explanation of doing both full and partial transparency in PSP in this thread:

/109/51/25816/1.html

The technique above works, but using a mask layer produces cleaner edges than using the magic wand - I explained how to use the layer instead in the thread linked here. Good luck

I am going to start having a go at that right now

*keeps everything crossed*

Hey, I'm brand new too, so I just went through the process of figuring this stuff out for myself. I'm too stubborn to use any other graphics program after I paid for PSP

As described in the thread linked previously, the best way to do TGA transparency is to start by creating your image with PSP's normal transparency in a non-background raster layer. Once you've got the texture looking like you want it to, hide every single other layer (i.e. the grids you may be using for clothing) and create a mask layer. Use the "source opacity" option, without inversion. Now select the mask layer in the layers palette. Go to the layers menu and save it as an alpha channel, ensuring that it is the only alpha channel saved in the image.

Now here's a critical step: make a new layer below your texture layer, fill it with pure black (0,0,0), and then "flatten" the image (merge all). It didn't seem to work for me unless I had completely merged the image down to a single background image with only one alpha channel; leaving that mask around really screws things up. Black is necessary so that other colors aren't mixed in on merge. Now save as TGA, with the 24 bit option (although maybe an 8-bit greyscale TGA with alpha channel might work...) and uncompressed. That should do it.

The real stumbling point for me was those caveats in the last paragraph. If things aren't exactly right, PSP seemed to produce a TGA that SL didn't like.

Strange, Lex. I use PSP 9 and do not have these problems with the mask method. Just as you have done, i take the layer i want to use, hide everything else so background is transparent, add a mask layer (Layers->New mask Layer->from Image) and use source opacity, then save that mask layer to alpha channel (Layers -> Load/Save Mask -> Save Mask to Alpha channel). When you save as a 24 bit TGA (no option to do 32 bit, but don't worry, the alpha channel is included) you need to have one alpha channel, so you might want to delete all the alpha channels but the one you want. But I have no need to merge layers or create a black layer.

That's generally what I do if I'm only using PSP.

Every tutorial that I have followed resulted in my design plus white space. I've selected what I want to go to the alpha channel, save the selection as an alpha... and other times save the new mask layer that I've created as an alpha channel. Time and again I get the white space. It's driving me nuts. What one tiny step am I missing?!

And to anyone that is interested, I love this site for PSP tutorials. It may not be specifically about clothes in SL, but I always learn new techniques and tips from here...

http://www.pspug.org/tut/tut8eff.shtml

By white space, do you mean you are getting a halo effect around the edges?

Nef,
If you mean you are seeing white where it should be transparent, then I believe you have an extra alpha channel in there. Essentially it covers a full layer thus creating a white background rather than the transparency.
This often crops up when working with a new image.
I have got in the habit of always checking the Image drop down menu for delete alpha channel before I save the mask I just created to my image's alpha channel, if it's greyed out no other channels exist if not greyed out there is one saved to the image already and selecting delete alpha cannel will delete it.
This is always a good habit to have when you are making numerous changes to an image.

Lex,
I know just what your saying about the black layer.
Actually how I use that trick is to create a layer in a color that matches the outside edges of my image. For instance a black T-Shirt with blue armbands would get a blue layer, as the bands are the edge exposed to the mask. If that shirt also had another color for the neckband I will paint that color under the neckline.
What this does is eliminate the possibility of of your image having a halo or what I call shadowing on the edges where the mask meets the image when you upload it inworld.

I never merge my layers unless I am creating a special effect though. It isn't really essential to creating a clean image, and I find it easier to bounce between SL and PSP to make adjustments on line up and placement of embellishments as I use a lot of layers sometimes when I create a complicated design.

Pahoa

Pahoa - Thank you! Yes there was an extra Alpha channel and it didn't occur to me (still new at this) that it was blocking out the design. Hallelujah!

Christiano - After I understood what I was missing, yes I got a white outline around some of the designs...and your other post helped me figure that one out.

Woot! Thank you!

As it turns out, I was wrong about the need to merge. I must have thought that merging was the thing that solved my problem when I'd actually changed something else too, like having an extra alpha channel or something.

Anyway, yes, I was doing some work with a pale transparent yellow texture the other day and discovered that neither merging with black nor white actually resulted in the image I wanted. I had to merge with a yellow of roughly the same color to the non-transparent part of my image to get the right effect. I did some thinking about it, and realized that no process of any sort that PSP supports can take an image with PSP's transparency and result in an exactly equivalent transparent TGA every time. I kind of wonder if the same problem happens in PS, but I don't have PS.

Let's say I want to have a texture that's filled with a red color (50,0,0) and is at exactly 50% opacity. The equivalent TGA would be filled with solid (50,0,0) and have an alpha channel filled with 50% grey. Basically, I'd have to convince PSP to strip off that transparency data from the layer and just give me a solid (50,0,0)... but there's no way to do this. The only thing you can do to "get rid of" transparency in PSP is to merge it with a solid layer below, and that will result in mixing the transparent colors with whatever's in the solid layer, which means you end up with an invalid result image. Damn.

I think the only true way to go from a transparent layer in PSP to the exactly equivalent transparent TGA is to do as some have suggested: save as a PNG with alpha transparency (use the PNG optimizer) and then download ImageMagick, which can do the correct conversion between transparent PNG and transparent TGA.