Texturing Predicament

Hello, I have recently started to make body art. The only problem is that when I go to wear my art I see a white halo. I know there are many help guides on the forums, but none of them have the problem I do. Since I currently only make all black art, I just draw it, create the alpha layer from the selection, and then flood the whole layer with black, so that only what is in the alpha's 'white space' will show up. Yet I still get the white halo. Any ideas?

What you are describing has been asked many times before in any post about tattoos or using an alpha layer. I don't know what program you are using, but this thread should cover your needs.

/109/32/80851/1.html

I've already read that thread...with no luck. By the way I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS3. Here are some pictures of what It looks like in Photoshop.

With Alpha Channel Displaying...



Without Alpha Channel Displaying...



Hope that helps...

Thats one reason I love Gimp, none of that halo nonsense.

Amedeo, everything you're doing looks right. There's no reason you should be seeing a halo. Can you post a screenshot of the tattoo in SL with the halo showing? I'd like to see what you mean.


Jamay, just so you know, the lack of haloing in GIMP goes hand in hand with lack of control. The halo is not "nonsense". The fact that GIMP isn't producing it means it's also not doing a lot of other very important things. Preventing the halo is a two-click process, literally less than one second's work, but putting back the stuff that GIMP is missing should you need to is way more involved and could take a long time. It's not that GIMP is bad, but it does have some major limitations. This is one of the areas where what seems like a slight advantage for one task can turn out to be tremendous disadvantage for other things.

I'm not arguing the pros or cons of Photoshop or GIMP...........I only have limited experience with GIMP. But, I think I've asked this before. When your project is a simple one color drawing (such as a black tattoo) why would you draw in a colored background in the first place? I have a transparent background I have saved along with all my templates that I use for such drawings..........it's not necessary to create an alpha mask and paint the transparent areas black and the opaque areas white. Simply resize and save as tga. Can something like that not be done in Photoshop? I've never seen a halo on anything I've done that way. But then I only make alpha layer masks when I'm "cutting" specific items out of another texture or photo.

Edited to mention I did the cardinal no no...........substitute layer with channel

Hi, When you`re viewing the "Layers" tab, put a black background BEHIND your dragon- are you seeing the white halo? If so, theres your answer.

Make your dragon pure black in photoshop. What I do is select the art, and then go to "brightness/contrast" and move the slides until the dragon/white can not be seen on the black background.

I think thats your problem as you show us no photo with your dragon against a black background for us to really know.

If you still cant pinpoint the problem, another workaround would be to tint your tat black inworld.

in adobe, save your dragon tattoo as a ping (none for interlace). I just made a bunch of tatts using this format instead of tga and they look just as good.

Hey, guys. Sorry for the long reply. I had to get a new video card...blah blah blah. Anyways here is the picture of the white halo showing in SL.

White Halo Showing:



Hope that helps.

Oh, also,
I don't want to have to do that because I will be making more tattoos that are actually colored. So, making it all black would defeat the purpose of having multiple colors.

-Amedeo Appin

Amedeo, did you ever at any time install an automated alpha channel plug-in? If you did, then it could be interfering with your Photoshop's ability to do make alphas properly. If not, then you've got me stumped here.

Looking at your pictures, your canvas is completely black, right? The only part of the image that has anything other than black on it is the alpha channel? With that being the case, there's no reason you should be seeing a halo like that.

It looks like that tattoo came out of PS 7.0, but since you're using PS CS3, and since your pictures of your workspace look right, I really don't get it. Sorry.

Amedeo

just to clarify, what is your tatto background colour?

Do you cut your tattoo out and paste it to the alpha channel or is it the background that you paste to the alpha channel?

Is it possible that it is just SL being silly and the image hasn't finished getting in focus?

No, it can't be that it hasn't gotten into focus. I've sat there and watched it for a good ten minutes.

Amedeo, what you're doing should be working. The fact that it's not means that there is something going on that we aren't thinking to look for, and you're not thinking to mention.

Umm... would you be comfortable sending me the original file, and your 32 bit targa so I can take a look at it?

Let me know.

I would also like to know if you have tried saving it and uploading it as a PNG file and forgetting about the alpha channel and the TGA file altogether? I am finding more and more the usefulness of the PNG transparancy when it comes to textures directly on the avatar.

Is there more than one layer in your PSD file? The only thing I can figure is that your all black layer isn't the background layer and you still have a standard white background. If that's the case, flatten the image before you save as a TGA.

For some reason I just haven't been Flattening my images. I don't know why, I guess I've just been lazy. But, when I flattened my image it removed the white halo! So I'm glad that worked.

/me makes mental note to always flatten images.

Thanks guys (and girls) for all of your help!
- Amedeo

P.S. - This is what it looks like now.