How to mask sculpty texture with Gimp?

I have not been able to find anyone who can tell me how to do this -- I have found Gimp people and I have found SL people but no Gimp SL people. But I know they exist!

I have a non-SL Gimp person trying to talk me through the process and he says I can't save as a tga, it has to be png, because you can't save anything transparent as a tga with Gimp.

How would I know?

ANY helpful info would be deeply appreciated!

You can save a texture as tga in GIMP. That's the only format i use for textures to be used in SL. I even save pictures in tga if I intend to upload to SL. GIMP is the main graphics program I use for any image editing.......the only other I use is Paint.NET (which, by the way, can also save images as tga).

Your non-GIMP friend is all wet.............LOL.

thanks! The guy who told me is non SL, not non Gimp, though.

I was rude.......I forgot to say how to save it in tga Sorry.

When you want to save your image or texture on the image window go to file and "save as". In the dialog that opens choose where you want to save it (most of the time I save to desktop then later move it a folder I use for textures or pictures). Give it a name and then at the bottom of the dialog box you will see a format box with a plus sign..........hit the plus sign and scroll down to TarGA and click it. You and also just type .tga if you want. Another dialog will open if you have layers or any transparency in the image telling you to export. Say okay. And one more box will open asking if you want to compress the file. Since compressing is what you want to avoid when uploading to SL uncheck both boxes and say okay. It's saved as tga.

to mask a scupltie, open your sculptie map texture. Under Layer menu>>Mask>>Add Layer Mask. Choose Black (full transparency). Save. It will ask you confirm because you are losing data. You aren't. Confirm.

You can do fancier touches, too. Like add a layer with your company logo or name, black on transparent. Select black on that layer. In the Layer Dialog, make the sculptie map your active layer. Add Layer Mask>>Selection. Then remove your logo layer. Your logo or name will show through in pretty colors and most of the sculptie map will be invisible.