Newbie

Hello, I was hoping I could get some advice here...I am not very familiar at all with using the graphics program I have ( PSP 9 ) but I am very interested in learning how to create clothing or or any other kind of content for SL....any suggestions as to where I might start?

Yup. Let me suggest two parallel activities.

1. Start reading through the stickies at the top of this forum, paying particular attention to the one called "Texture Size, Pixel Counts, Video Memory, and File Formats" and the one called "Transparency and Alpha Channels: The Definitive Guide." A very large number of the questions in this forum are from people who haven't taken the time to read that stuff carefully. The other stickies are important, too, but the two I just mentioned contain basic theory that will make your design work LOTS easier and more fun once you understand it.

2. Try making some simple things. There are some nice tutorials out there, and it may help get your creative confidence up if you play with a couple of them to make things, even before you really understand what you're doing. Other people will have suggestions, but I think Natalia Zelmanov's tutorials are about the nicest ones for a new designer to start with. They are at http://www.mermaiddiaries.com/2006/11/build.html[\url].

I suggest doing both of these things at the same time. When you figure out which one is more interesting to you, tell yourself to spend more serious time on the other one instead.

Note added in Edit: Oh, yes..... Go to the nearset good-sized bookstore and buy yourself a good manual to teach yourself how to fly your software.

Thank you, yes the book would really help. I was reading one of the stickies and was trying to find the Channels Palette as this tutorial explains
http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLTutSet.html
to try to understand and I can't find it, I found a list of pallets but channels wasn't one of them. I will check out the ones you have listed.

Ah, yes... Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, GIMP, and other graphic design programs use different language to describe the same thing, and they put their buttons and menus in different places. Robin Wood's tutorial is written for someone following along in Photoshop. The theory is the same regardless of what program you use, but you have to learn your own program well enough to know which buttons and menus do the same things she is demonstrating in Photoshop. Hence, the need to rush out and buy a good book.

Note added in edit: Incidentally, if you read far enough down in the sticky on Transparency and Alpha Channels at the top of this forum, you'll find that Chosen Few walks through tutorials in several different graphics programs (Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Paintshop Pro, ...).

The reason you couldn't find the channels palette in PSP is because PSP does not have a channels palette.

PSP is a great program for its mere $99 price tag, but it does have certain weaknesses, and you've just discovered the first. The lack of a channels palette is pretty annoying. In order to create/edit channels in PSP, you have to use masks as proxies. You copy channel information to and from masks. It's a bit circuitous, bit it works. See the sticky for more information.