Thanks ^_^...But yet another question?

Thanks for your help Forseti Svarq ....

I've desided to work with psp and with the help of spacethinkdream alpha-channel-primer got the alpha thing down.


My question now is the designs used for alpha layers are they drawn with shapes and freehand or is there an easier and faster way of doing the designs......

hmm... not sure exactly what you are asking.

if you are drawing all your alpha channels by hand... crikey! In PSP, hide everything but what you want to show and make sure the background is transparent, then add a mask layer (I usually use source opacity but depends on what you are doing) and save it to alpha channel.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding... Please elaborate on your question.

Cheers

For clothing, i deleted all the existing alpha layers that are included in the LL templates. The versions I modified and saved have only a black background, working layer, and the overlay/pattern outline layers.

This way, when you've made an item you create a new mask layer for each new design. If you plan on making a lot of items with the same cut, this isn't as efficient, but the extra step to make the mask and save it to an alpha channel is pretty simple, so I would recommend going that route.

I save all my clothing (attempts) as targa files (.tga) in photoshop and they seem to be okay in SL.
Is there any benefit to using alpha channels?

Camille, if your designs contain transparent areas, then the image file is using an alpha channel. I have not designed in Photoshop, so the interface I'm sure is different. You may not explicitly be creating or saving an alpha channel per se, but the areas that you want to be transparent are being masked. I save all my clothing images as .tga, as it is the only file type (that i am aware of) that supports the transparency feature.

I'm not sure how psp works but in Photoshop I:

1. Create the image design on a working layer
2. Disable other background layers that are not part of my design
3. Select all of my design on the working layer (the parts I don't want transparent)
4. Go to Select > Save Selection
5. Hit ok on the popup box - without naming the selection

This generates an alpha layer in the channels tab - based on the shape of my selection. The part of my design I want to see is white, the parts I want transparent are black.

6. Enable the alpha layer
7. Make any adjustments needed on the working layer
8. Flatten the image (making sure all background layers are disgarded)
9. Save as a tga -32 bit
10 Upload my image then scream frantically about why my seams don't match around the neck. lol. Rinse, repeat til I'm pleased.

ROFL - for me, it's the darned sleeves, lol. The only way I know I'm improving is the proportion of uploads that I don't end up deleting and doing over

heheh inari.... yeah, it's the bloody back of the neck and getting the seams to match up to the front neckline that YYYARRRRGGGG gets this chipmunk hopping up and down