Help :(

Hopefully Chip will read this!!

I am using your templates to make tattoo's. well when I do what I need to do, it isnt saving transparent! Using Paintshop Pro btw.....

any help????

Thanks in advance,
Michelle Pinkerton

you need to create an alpha i think

i found this from another thread, some people had problems with alphas before you can find a lot by just browsing through the threads , hope it helps

http://www.sluniverse.com/kb/article.aspx?id=10190

Ahh yes, I have that one book marked but still not working!

Are you saving it as a .tga file and saving it as 32 bits?

Hi Michelle, I use photoshop rather than PSP so I don't know the steps for creating an alpha channel with that program. This comes up daily though so if you search the forum for threads with alpha and psp in them you should find what you're looking for. Nicola Escher's alpha primer might help. You can find it here: http://www.spacethinkdream.com/articles/article/6/alpha-channel-primer

Chip,

I downloaded your templates, and I am trying to use them. I get to the point where I do make an alpha, and of course I save it as a TGA file, when I load it into the game its not transparent. Am I not clicking something off or on when I save to make transparent??

Thanks Chip!

It could be a number of reasons... not properly creating the alpha channel in PSP, not saving in the correct bit depth, or something else. It's most likely an issue with not doing something properly in PSP and not related to the templates. Since I don't use PSP I can't be of much help. Sorry.

Just to rule one thing out...
After you make the alpha channel/mask be sure to "save mask to alpha channel" before saving. A tiny but very important step.
For the sake of ease I really recommend making a custom toolbar and adding "mask from image" "save mask to alpha" and if you plan to reuse your alpha channel "save mask to disk" then it's a bam bam bam 3 button pushing step.

I do use psp and have different versions so I'd be more than happy to help you figure this out if you need.

Sunshine

Michelle

I use Photoshop and I have used Chip's templates, a couple of things:

A) Have you merged your layers?

B) once the layers are merged, use the magic wand tool to select the items

C) once the items are selected, go to the top and choose "Select" and then choose "Inverse", this makes the actual object selected.

D) On your tool bar you will see two squares with circles in the center, these are the quick mask modes, choose "edit in qucik mask mode" and the area that should be alpha will show as red, then save the image as a .tga

There are other ways to do this, but this is the one I use.

Good Luck - Rose

Well, hmmmm I guess if I actually downloaded the right templates!!!!!

How embarrasing is that!! LOL

Working great now!!! thanks everyone for listening to me whine!!