quick question about ps7.0

i was just reading in the wiki at this link here
that to use ps 7.0 you need to up graded to 7.01 to save alphas. the exact quote is


now i have been using PS 7.0 for 4 years now 2 of witch i have been using it in SL and to save a .tga files for up load to second life and what i do to save something with a transparency in 7.0 is to simply start with a transparent background file paint what ever i need to be covered on the clothing template then save as a 32 bit .tga. AND Not having to make an alpha layer. any area i leave transparent on the template will be transparent in world.

so if you have 7.0 don't upgrade 7.01 just leave areas that you want transparent transparent and they will be transparent in world with out having to use an alpha layer.

how ever if any one know of anything that would render items made in this way unusable some time in the future by some kind of change made to the way things are rendered in world. I would like to know.

If it works that way for you then you have 7.01, not 7.0

Hi Crucial. Before I anwer your question, I gotta get something off my chest. You hit on my number one forum petpeave. There's no such thing as an "alpha layer". It's an alpha CHANNEL. Layers and channels are entirely different things, and interchanging the two terms causes a lot of confusion for people trying to learn all this. This forum is the only place on the face of the earth where the term "alpha layer" exists, and I do my best to squash it every time it appears. For more info on the differences between layers and channels, see this thread.

To answer your question, there are several problems with TGA files created by the 7.0 auto-alpha saver. These are in no particular order, and this is far from a complete list, but here are the major problems, off the top of my head:

1. It causes artifacts that are impossible to get rid of, the most common of which is a halo around the opaque parts of the image. The halo can range from bright and glaringly obvious to very faint, depending on the apllication in which the TGA is being viewed. In SL, it tends to be pretty obvious.
   
2. It makes your work flow more difficult for images with comlex variances in transparency, like stained glass windows, for example.
   
3. Those who use it don't develop the skill to create and manipulate alpha channels, which is a serious handicap if and when they ever have to work with (or compete with) others who have said skill.
   
4. Files produced in such a manner do not behave properly when opened in other versions of Photoshop, and in a great many other graphics appliations.
   
5. Creating even the most complex alpha channel you could imagine only takes a second or two, so the automated process is not a time saver in any way. In fact, it can often be a time increaser, as mentioned above in the second point.

Oh, how I wish Adobe had never come out with that terribly flawed attempt at automation. It's caused so much unnecessary confusion over the past few years. Like many people, I myself thought it would be an improvement when it first came out. It didn't take long to discover the problems with it though.

So, to contrast what you said, to anyone and everyone reading this, by all means upgrade to 7.0.1 if you're using 7.0. It's quick and painless, it will allow you to work the way 99.9% of all texture artists work, and it will improve the quality of your end product. Alpha channels are easy and fast, and no one should be reluctant to use them.

thanks chip guess i never knew that cause every thing in my program says 7.0 they must of left off the .01

thnaks chosen

i will take that up to concideration i am actually thinking of buying PS CS soon

i was just very curious about the " need " to up date to 7.01

cheers

Chip, buddy, are you perhaps reading a little too fast today? The behavior Crucial is describing is 7.0 behavior, not 7.0.1 behavior. He's painting transparent areas invisble, and then saving out to 32-bit TGA, WITHOUT manually creating an alpha channel. Were he using 7.0.1, he'd be seeing white where his transparency is unless he'd created an alpha by hand. In other words, he's letting the aoftware automate the alpha creation process for him, which is what 7.0 does.


See above. The reason it says 7.0 is because 7.0 is what you're using.

Hah, looks like we're all typing at once here.

You're welcome, Crucial. When you upgrade to CS, it's probably going to take you a little while to get used to manual alpha channels since you're used to 7.0. If you need any help learning what to do, let me know. Always happy to help.

Hmmm, are you sure, Chosen? It was my understanding that PS had always saved the alpha to the transparency channel instead of where it was actually supposed to be and they decided to "correct" that with 7 and save alpha according to the actual TGA file spec, resulting in much uproar. At the time I was mostly dealing with alpha channels created in 3ds that I needed to composite in PS. 7 changed the way 32bit TGA files created in max worked in PS (all the color channel info in the tranparent areas would be wiped when opened in PS which was a big pain in the ass since it required background and foreground elements to be put in seperate files). 7.01 fixed that problem. It's been so long ago now that I don't really remember much other than that it severely screwed me for a while at the time. It's entirely possible that I never upgraded my current installs to 7.01 since I long ago stopped having to use PS for composites.

If I can break in here, yeah, Chip, that's 7.0 alright.

From the Adobe Website

***

Targa plug-in

Versions of Adobe Photoshop earlier than version 7.0 saved the first alpha channel in a file into the fourth channel when writing Targa files. Photoshop 7.0 changed the application's default behavior to save transparency information instead of an alpha channel, resulting in incompatibility with some existing workflows. In response to user feedback, this plug-in restores the earlier behavior of the Targa plug-in.

***

And, when they released the patch, there was much rejoicing!

OK I'm super confused now.

I make all my targas the way Crucial does - I've never made an alpha channel in my life. I've used photoshop up to and including CS2, which is what I have on my home machine.

I'm on a different machine while I'm on vacation, and I put CS2 on this one as well. (This is the first time photoshop has been installed on this machine as far as I know.) However, now I can't make targas the way I normally do - it always puts a blank white background on the file.

Sooooooo....one version of CS2 works one way, and another version doesn't? *head asploads*


*EDIT: I had 7.0 on my machine and never installed the 7.01 patch. I wonder if that kept the functionality that both Crucial and I use for targa creation throughout my other versions (I've had CS and CS2 since then)

Hi Cory!

I'm just guessing, but did you by any chance copy your plug-ins folder from Photoshop 7.0 when you upgraded to CS? Or point CS to your old plug-ins folder as "Additional Plug-Ins" and now have two of each file format in your "save as" list?

If you did, then you may have unintentionally persisted in using the 7.0 targa behavior.

Trust us; the only version of PS that ever shipped with that particular behavior was 7.0, because it was quickly found to be a huge mistake, and a real problem for everyone. (Except for those people who are working alone, and not using any graphics software except PS, and apparently SL, which manages to read those things correctly. Not a feat shared by all graphics software, to put it mildly. And who don't notice, or don't care, about the black halos around their work.)

Many of us wish that they'd never done it, because of all the problems that it's caused, and continues to cause.

Honestly, you are much better off just learning to make Alpha channels. Good thing that they are extrodinarily simple to make, huh?