Second Life Forums Archive

CathyJo Partridge

LOVE DESIGNING!

Join date: 29 Apr 2005

Posts: 5

10-27-2005 03:29

When I make my clothing in psp, everything looks great, then I bring it into world and eveything has a white edges around it. I have gone back and zoomed in to make sure there is no white edges, tried again, but still a white outline around things. What can I do to get rid of this?

_____________________

LOVING MRK 4-EVER

Martin Magpie

Catherine Cotton

Join date: 13 Nov 2004

Posts: 1,826

10-27-2005 03:33

one cause could be that your selection tool has its tolerance set to anything but zero.

Mar

_____________________

CathyJo Partridge

LOVE DESIGNING!

Join date: 29 Apr 2005

Posts: 5

i'll try that

10-27-2005 03:36

Thanks Mar!!!

_____________________

LOVING MRK 4-EVER

Ben Bacon

Registered User

Join date: 14 Jul 2005

Posts: 809

10-27-2005 03:49

Also make sure that your texture "bleeds" over the edges. (It's good to draw outside the lines for SL

)
Let your material textures be too big and extend past where you want the clothing to end - and use the alpha channel to define the edges.
If your texture ends at the same place your alpha channel does, you will often see these halos.

Forseti Svarog

ESC

Join date: 2 Nov 2004

Posts: 1,730

10-27-2005 08:47

the white edge often happens when people save an alpha and there are semi-transparent pixels in the image. If you have anti-aliased edges, those pixels will be semi-transparent.

when you save as a tga file, it "flattens" the image with a white background, but your alpha channel tells SL that the edge pixels should be semi-transparent, so the white shows through.

here's the solution:

1. create your image and alpha channel like normal

2. AFTER the alpha channel is made, but before you save, put a layer behind everything else, and fill it with one or more colors that match up with the darker colors of your edge. Now save your file.

this way, your semi-trans pixels are showing through to a darker layer, not a white layer.

_____________________

Chosen Few

Alpha Channel Slave

Join date: 16 Jan 2004

Posts: 7,496

10-27-2005 09:21

Ben and Forseti are correct. Don't mess with your selection tool settings. That has nothing to do with it. This is an extremely common issue caused by anti-aliasing, the process by which computers soften the appearance of jagged edges by combining pixel colors. Usually when an alpha channel is created, you end up with some gray pixels along the edges of the white areas. These are necessary to make the edges look smooth on any dagonals or curves. Without the anti-aliasing, such edges would look jagged or stepped (aliased).

These gray pixels are meant to give the image a bit of semi-transparency along the edges so that the coloring of the opaque areas and the coloring of whatever shows behind the transparent areas will be able to combine. Unfortunately though, if your image is not set up properly to account for that, then you end up with the all too familiar white halo of doom. This is especially common for those who insist on using auto-creation tools for their alpha channels like the bugged file pulled from Photoshop 7.0 that keeps floating around this board.

Eliminating the halo is easy (provided you aren't using any auto tools). The "right" way to do it, the highest quality way, is to do what Ben said, which is to make sure your areas of color extend past the edges of the alpha channel. A quicker way to go about is what Forseti said, which is simply to give your images a dark background. The latter method still produces a halo, but it's a dark halo instead of a light one. Such dark halos are almost always indetectable in SL.

_____________________

.

Land now available for rent in Indigo. Low rates. Quiet, low-lag mainland sim with good neighbors. IM me in-world if you're interested.

CathyJo Partridge

LOVE DESIGNING!

Join date: 29 Apr 2005

Posts: 5

Awesome Ppl

10-27-2005 22:58

Ty All So Very Much, I Do Appreciate All Your Help. I Don't Quite Understand How To Make The Area Bigger Then The Alpha When I Have To Use The Thing I Created To Make The Alpha In The First Place. Sorry I Feel Dumb

_____________________

LOVING MRK 4-EVER

Lo Jacobs

Awesome Possum

Join date: 28 May 2004

Posts: 2,734

10-27-2005 23:04

Hi Cathy,

This thread might help you out:

/109/8b/48537/1.html

I use it and as far as I know I have no white edges, unless people have been too kind to point it out to me (which I doubt).

_____________________

http://churchofluxe.com/Luster

Chosen Few

Alpha Channel Slave

Join date: 16 Jan 2004

Posts: 7,496

10-28-2005 08:39

From: Lo Jacobs

Hi Cathy,

This thread might help you out:

/109/8b/48537/1.html

I use it and as far as I know I have no white edges, unless people have been too kind to point it out to me (which I doubt).

That's exactly the tool I was advising not to use. Well, if you can call it a tool. It's actually the TGA save process from Photoshop 7.0. It's bugged, and it causes low quality results. Here's my standard explanation of it, which I've posted in many threads:

With respect, I STRONGLY recommend against using that. If you have Photosho CS2, or any version of Photoshop other than 7.0, leave it exactly as is. If you have 7.0, get the free 7.0.1 patch from adobe.com. DO NOT change your TGA save process file to act like that of 7.0. Photoshop 7.0 was Adobe's one and only attempt at automated alpha channel creation for TGA images, and it didn't work. It was an idea that sounded really good in concept, but turned out to be really, really, really bad in practice. All it did was eliminate the level of control that manual channel editing allows, and it made every single image prone to the white halo effect without any way to get rid of it.

It will save you a little work, but it's not going to yield very precise results. You'll quite often end up with a white halo around your images if you use it. Let me share a little Photoshop history here.

The "tool" described in that thread is the TGA saver from Photoshop 7.0, the only version of Photoshop ever to toy with automatic alpha channel creation for TGA's. As the autohor of the other thread mentioned, "advanced users" don't like it. Let me explain why.

When PS7 first came out, I thought it was really cool. No more having to bother "painting" transparency into images, what an improvement, right? WRONG!

It quickly became apparent that this auto-alpha process was seriously flawed. Unlike a human being, the software has no way of determining what it is you really want your image to look like. Because of that, the automation often led to several problems. Areas of partial transparency became really hard to get right. Anti-aliasing along edges caused ghostly white halos, which could not be gotten rid of.

In short, for lack of a better term, this thing was kind of the lazy man's dummy approach to transparency, and it didn't work very well at all. It provided no way to precisely control the appearance of the image.

Realizing the error of their ways, Adobe very quickly released a patch (7.0.1), which restored TGA workflow to how it had always been before, and they've kept it that way ever since. They learned an important lesson: if it ain't broke, don't break it.

So, if you decide to use that "tool" from 7.0, do so at your own risk. Understand that while it appears to save a little effort, it seriously compromises the quality of your work, and for complex images with lots of variation in transparency (like, say, a stained glass window, for example), it will actually greatly increase the amount of time and effort you'll have to spend in order to get your work to look right. The best thing to do is to learn once and for all the ins and outs of alpha channels, and get in the habit of making them. Once you develop the habit, it shouldn't take you more than a minute or so to make even the most complex alpha in the world. It's a really simple process.

From: CathyJo Partridge

Ty All So Very Much, I Do Appreciate All Your Help. I Don't Quite Understand How To Make The Area Bigger Then The Alpha When I Have To Use The Thing I Created To Make The Alpha In The First Place. Sorry I Feel Dumb

Don't feel dumb. This stuff is not intuitive to most people. You're learnig the equivilent of a new language here.

Anyway, to answer your question, after you make the alpha channel, bleeding the cloring of the image elements past the borders of the alpha is a very simple matter. There are many ways to do it, but for simplicity sake, let's just talk about the paint brush for the moment.

Let's say the image you were applying the alpha channel to is a purple bikini top. Well, after you make the alpha channel, go back to the layers palette. Assuming the bikini is on its own layer, create a new layer directly beneath it. Using a large brush, paint purple all around the edges of the bikini. Don't be afraid to make a mess. Make sure everything around the bikini is good and purple. Don't miss a single pixel within a 50-10 pixel radius of the bikini's edges. It's all gotta be purple.

All this mess-making will not harm the integrity of your image in any way. The alpha channel is going to cut out the image in the right places when you view the image in SL. What's happining is we're giving those anti-aliased, semi-transparent pixels along the edges of the bikini something to blend with that is the same color they already are. They only lighten and form the white halo when they've got a lighter color or no color at all behind them to blend with.

Keep in mind the paint brush example I used here was only for simplicity, so you could rasp the concept. In most cases, the paintbrush is not the best way to go about it.

_____________________

.

Land now available for rent in Indigo. Low rates. Quiet, low-lag mainland sim with good neighbors. IM me in-world if you're interested.

Ben Bacon

Registered User

Join date: 14 Jul 2005

Posts: 809

10-28-2005 09:09

From: Chosen Few

The best thing to do is to learn once and for all the ins and outs of alpha channels, and get in the habit of making them.

When I started, alpha channels were a neccesary evil for me. They were the last step I had to do before using my textures - and they were the step that I always forgot

So I started creating my alpha channels first - after all, there's no way I was gonna forget the texture itself, right?

Well it didn't take long before I found that the whole process had become much easier - the creative process, I mean. I can now "sketch" using my alpha channel! I play around the with size and shape of the image purely in alpha before dropping a single pixel of colour. Once I'm pretty sure about the general shape - then I start with colour. The alpha doesn't have to be perfect and cast in stone - you'll probably find yourself toggling back and forth between layers and channels as one affects the look and feel of the other - but having that initial idea of shape makes it easier to place, warp and tint the colour.

Far from neccesary evils - Alpha Channels have become my friends.
(And they wanna be friends with you too

)

white edges
CathyJo Partridge LOVE DESIGNING! Join date: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 5	10-27-2005 03:29 When I make my clothing in psp, everything looks great, then I bring it into world and eveything has a white edges around it. I have gone back and zoomed in to make sure there is no white edges, tried again, but still a white outline around things. What can I do to get rid of this? _____________________ *LOVING MRK 4-EVER*
Martin Magpie Catherine Cotton Join date: 13 Nov 2004 Posts: 1,826	10-27-2005 03:33 one cause could be that your selection tool has its tolerance set to anything but zero. Mar _____________________
CathyJo Partridge LOVE DESIGNING! Join date: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 5	i'll try that 10-27-2005 03:36 Thanks Mar!!! _____________________ *LOVING MRK 4-EVER*
Ben Bacon Registered User Join date: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 809	10-27-2005 03:49 Also make sure that your texture "bleeds" over the edges. (It's good to draw outside the lines for SL ) Let your material textures be too big and extend past where you want the clothing to end - and use the alpha channel to define the edges. If your texture ends at the same place your alpha channel does, you will often see these halos.
Forseti Svarog ESC Join date: 2 Nov 2004 Posts: 1,730	10-27-2005 08:47 the white edge often happens when people save an alpha and there are semi-transparent pixels in the image. If you have anti-aliased edges, those pixels will be semi-transparent. when you save as a tga file, it "flattens" the image with a white background, but your alpha channel tells SL that the edge pixels should be semi-transparent, so the white shows through. here's the solution: 1. create your image and alpha channel like normal 2. AFTER the alpha channel is made, but before you save, put a layer behind everything else, and fill it with one or more colors that match up with the darker colors of your edge. Now save your file. this way, your semi-trans pixels are showing through to a darker layer, not a white layer. _____________________
Chosen Few Alpha Channel Slave Join date: 16 Jan 2004 Posts: 7,496	10-27-2005 09:21 Ben and Forseti are correct. Don't mess with your selection tool settings. That has nothing to do with it. This is an extremely common issue caused by anti-aliasing, the process by which computers soften the appearance of jagged edges by combining pixel colors. Usually when an alpha channel is created, you end up with some gray pixels along the edges of the white areas. These are necessary to make the edges look smooth on any dagonals or curves. Without the anti-aliasing, such edges would look jagged or stepped (aliased). These gray pixels are meant to give the image a bit of semi-transparency along the edges so that the coloring of the opaque areas and the coloring of whatever shows behind the transparent areas will be able to combine. Unfortunately though, if your image is not set up properly to account for that, then you end up with the all too familiar white halo of doom. This is especially common for those who insist on using auto-creation tools for their alpha channels like the bugged file pulled from Photoshop 7.0 that keeps floating around this board. Eliminating the halo is easy (provided you aren't using any auto tools). The "right" way to do it, the highest quality way, is to do what Ben said, which is to make sure your areas of color extend past the edges of the alpha channel. A quicker way to go about is what Forseti said, which is simply to give your images a dark background. The latter method still produces a halo, but it's a dark halo instead of a light one. Such dark halos are almost always indetectable in SL. _____________________ . Land now available for rent in Indigo. Low rates. Quiet, low-lag mainland sim with good neighbors. IM me in-world if you're interested.
CathyJo Partridge LOVE DESIGNING! Join date: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 5	Awesome Ppl 10-27-2005 22:58 Ty All So Very Much, I Do Appreciate All Your Help. I Don't Quite Understand How To Make The Area Bigger Then The Alpha When I Have To Use The Thing I Created To Make The Alpha In The First Place. Sorry I Feel Dumb _____________________ *LOVING MRK 4-EVER*
Lo Jacobs Awesome Possum Join date: 28 May 2004 Posts: 2,734	10-27-2005 23:04 Hi Cathy, This thread might help you out: /109/8b/48537/1.html I use it and as far as I know I have no white edges, unless people have been too kind to point it out to me (which I doubt). _____________________ http://churchofluxe.com/Luster
Chosen Few Alpha Channel Slave Join date: 16 Jan 2004 Posts: 7,496	10-28-2005 08:39 From: Lo Jacobs Hi Cathy, This thread might help you out: /109/8b/48537/1.html I use it and as far as I know I have no white edges, unless people have been too kind to point it out to me (which I doubt). That's exactly the tool I was advising not to use. Well, if you can call it a tool. It's actually the TGA save process from Photoshop 7.0. It's bugged, and it causes low quality results. Here's my standard explanation of it, which I've posted in many threads: With respect, I STRONGLY recommend against using that. If you have Photosho CS2, or any version of Photoshop other than 7.0, leave it exactly as is. If you have 7.0, get the free 7.0.1 patch from adobe.com. DO NOT change your TGA save process file to act like that of 7.0. Photoshop 7.0 was Adobe's one and only attempt at automated alpha channel creation for TGA images, and it didn't work. It was an idea that sounded really good in concept, but turned out to be really, really, really bad in practice. All it did was eliminate the level of control that manual channel editing allows, and it made every single image prone to the white halo effect without any way to get rid of it. It will save you a little work, but it's not going to yield very precise results. You'll quite often end up with a white halo around your images if you use it. Let me share a little Photoshop history here. The "tool" described in that thread is the TGA saver from Photoshop 7.0, the only version of Photoshop ever to toy with automatic alpha channel creation for TGA's. As the autohor of the other thread mentioned, "advanced users" don't like it. Let me explain why. When PS7 first came out, I thought it was really cool. No more having to bother "painting" transparency into images, what an improvement, right? WRONG! It quickly became apparent that this auto-alpha process was seriously flawed. Unlike a human being, the software has no way of determining what it is you really want your image to look like. Because of that, the automation often led to several problems. Areas of partial transparency became really hard to get right. Anti-aliasing along edges caused ghostly white halos, which could not be gotten rid of. In short, for lack of a better term, this thing was kind of the lazy man's dummy approach to transparency, and it didn't work very well at all. It provided no way to precisely control the appearance of the image. Realizing the error of their ways, Adobe very quickly released a patch (7.0.1), which restored TGA workflow to how it had always been before, and they've kept it that way ever since. They learned an important lesson: if it ain't broke, don't break it. So, if you decide to use that "tool" from 7.0, do so at your own risk. Understand that while it appears to save a little effort, it seriously compromises the quality of your work, and for complex images with lots of variation in transparency (like, say, a stained glass window, for example), it will actually greatly increase the amount of time and effort you'll have to spend in order to get your work to look right. The best thing to do is to learn once and for all the ins and outs of alpha channels, and get in the habit of making them. Once you develop the habit, it shouldn't take you more than a minute or so to make even the most complex alpha in the world. It's a really simple process. From: CathyJo Partridge Ty All So Very Much, I Do Appreciate All Your Help. I Don't Quite Understand How To Make The Area Bigger Then The Alpha When I Have To Use The Thing I Created To Make The Alpha In The First Place. Sorry I Feel Dumb Don't feel dumb. This stuff is not intuitive to most people. You're learnig the equivilent of a new language here. Anyway, to answer your question, after you make the alpha channel, bleeding the cloring of the image elements past the borders of the alpha is a very simple matter. There are many ways to do it, but for simplicity sake, let's just talk about the paint brush for the moment. Let's say the image you were applying the alpha channel to is a purple bikini top. Well, after you make the alpha channel, go back to the layers palette. Assuming the bikini is on its own layer, create a new layer directly beneath it. Using a large brush, paint purple all around the edges of the bikini. Don't be afraid to make a mess. Make sure everything around the bikini is good and purple. Don't miss a single pixel within a 50-10 pixel radius of the bikini's edges. It's all gotta be purple. All this mess-making will not harm the integrity of your image in any way. The alpha channel is going to cut out the image in the right places when you view the image in SL. What's happining is we're giving those anti-aliased, semi-transparent pixels along the edges of the bikini something to blend with that is the same color they already are. They only lighten and form the white halo when they've got a lighter color or no color at all behind them to blend with. Keep in mind the paint brush example I used here was only for simplicity, so you could rasp the concept. In most cases, the paintbrush is not the best way to go about it. _____________________ . Land now available for rent in Indigo. Low rates. Quiet, low-lag mainland sim with good neighbors. IM me in-world if you're interested.
Ben Bacon Registered User Join date: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 809	10-28-2005 09:09 From: Chosen Few The best thing to do is to learn once and for all the ins and outs of alpha channels, and get in the habit of making them. When I started, alpha channels were a neccesary evil for me. They were the last step I had to do before using my textures - and they were the step that I always forgot So I started creating my alpha channels first - after all, there's no way I was gonna forget the texture itself, right? Well it didn't take long before I found that the whole process had become much easier - the creative process, I mean. I can now "sketch" using my alpha channel! I play around the with size and shape of the image purely in alpha before dropping a single pixel of colour. Once I'm pretty sure about the general shape - then I start with colour. The alpha doesn't have to be perfect and cast in stone - you'll probably find yourself toggling back and forth between layers and channels as one affects the look and feel of the other - but having that initial idea of shape makes it easier to place, warp and tint the colour. Far from neccesary evils - Alpha Channels have become my friends. (And they wanna be friends with you too )

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white edges