Saving .TGAs with CS2

Hello, all -

recently upgraded to Photoshop CS2, and I'm suddenly having problems saving the transparency in my .tgas. (Worked fine in 7.x, and I believe I'm doing the same thing for both).

I create my alpha channel, and then do a "Save As..." I select the .tga format, and the dialog box comes up, but the "save alpha channels" box is unchecked and greyed out, with some kind of error on it.

I've included a screenshot (attached .jpg), if someone wouldn't mind having a look. I never had this problem before upgrading...is there some preference, plugin, or setting I'm missing?

Thanks in advance.

As far as I know, this is simply because you (maybe) haven't saved the file yet as either a psd or tga? <-- You would then 'Save copy as'. I get that grayed out box all the time, and simply click through it, then select the 32 bit version on the next dialog that pops up, and voila, pretty targa with transparency. If I want no trans tgas, I pick the 24 bit version on that second dialog box.

Hope that helps.

hmm edit -- maybe that's not the problem, but I DO often get grayed out radio buttons and still can save the way I want using save copy as.

damn. double edit -- you need to flatten your file first, then I think the grayed out option will be available.

I've saved the file several times, as both .psd and .tga. I did try clicking through as you suggest, and chose 32 bit .tga, but when I upload the file into SL the alpha channel has not been included -- the transparency is not there.

I also find it odd that the the "Save as copy" is checked by default (and also greyed out.)

did a bunch of edits to my last post :| sorry.

Flatten your file first, that *I think* is where you're running into your problem.

Photoshop 7 had a weird way of handling transparency. It saved transparency information instead of a proper alpha channel. PS2 is simply not allowing you to save it as a TGA as the alpha channel from the files you created in version 7 is not valid.

See how many channels there are in your channel panel.

Create a new channel in PS2. Then select everything in your old supposedly alpha channel and copy and paste it into the new channel you just created. Then delete your old alpha channel.

Try saving that and see if that works.

edit : By the way, there is no need to flatten your file to save 32-bit TGAs. You can selectively turn off certain layers and still save it properly.

I've experienced this problem also. So far what works for me is to go to your channels tab and duplicate the alpha. Delete the first one and then save.

Hi, Cottontail -

I had the patched version of PS 7; I understood that fixed the issue with the "nasty" alphas. Also, this file's alpha channel was created in CS2, not PS7; I've deleted and created it several times.

However, it may be there was something funky with the alpha channel in this file...I after the umpteenth time of deleting and recreating it, finally the dialog box for alpha is no longer greyed out.

Dang...I hope CS2 isn't this picky all the time...

Had the problem with a different file. Finally figured it out after rereading all the tutorials and figuring out what was different.

It seems that in CS2, you can only have one extra channel when you save as a .tga; in these files, I had done multiple "save selections" to create temporary paths, so there were multiple channels in the file. In Photoshop 7, it didn't care...you selected the channel you wanted for the alpha, I think.

So the key is, make sure you only have Red, Green, Blue, RGB, and your ONE alpha before trying to save to .tga; otherwise, the Save Alpha option is greyed out.

Thanks all for reading, in any case.

I forgot to clarify this.