Found an old photoshop, will it work for SL?

I just found in the bowels of my messy desk a Photoshop 5 program. It's got to be about 9+years old by now and I wanted to know if it will work in making some of the alphas for SL?

Sure, yes. PS 2.0 even had alpha channels in it, way back when.

Psshhhh...you could use Digi-Paint or Deluxe Paint. It's all good.

So the same tutorials for the current Photoshops will apply to this one? (Please say yes)

Maybe a few things will be abit different, but generally should be about the same.

Updates usually make a program better, and keep the methods, since the older users don't want to have to relearn

As Okiphia said, most of the basics will be the same. However, there will be things you'll encounter that are too new for version 5 to be able to do. For starters, if my version knowledge is accurate, you won't be able to follow any tutorials that require the use of custom brushes, vector objects, the Liquefy filter, or layer blending options (and a lot more). All of these things have become staples of Photoshop usage over the last decade. You can of course work without them, just as people did 10 years ago, but just be prepared that there will be a lot of tutorials that will be too new for you.

If you can afford it, I'd highly recommend upgrading to the latest version. If your old copy is legit, the upgrade price is only US$549.

Deluxe Paint! Just hearing that name gives me a sort of warm-fuzzy feeling What a fantastic program that was. I remember spending hours and hours with the animation and color cycling features alone.

I can still picture in my mind the first image I ever created with Deluxe Paint. Seems like AGES ago, and I guess it was - at least in computer years.

I'm just thinking that a recent version of Gimp would probably do more than an old PS version. But it will run on older hardware probably.

"ONLY" 549? At my current level of income it would take 55 months to pay for that from sl profits. Thats ok though, I don't need it.

Yes, ONLY $549. Compare that with $999 or $799 for a full install, depending on the version, and the world "only" easily applies. I'm not trying to say $549 isn't a good chunk of change. It's just all relative. The upgrade price is a pretty good discount.

If you're looking for something lower priced, I'd recommend Paintshop Pro over GIMP. GIMP's a little more powerful, but it's so non-standard, it's hard to learn. For a hundred bucks, PSP really delivers. It's got its shortcomings, but I'd take it over GIMP any day for the interface alone.

But you wouldn't have to be an "Alpha Channel Slave" anymore if you used the Gimp.

How do you figure that?

When I started reading the odd SL related Blog and forum entries, I kept running into posts about Alpha Channels and thinking “why are people talking about making simple transparent textures like it’s so hard to make them, and why with alpha channel layers???” There is almost no need to use Alpha Channels in the Gimp. Each layer having its own Alpha information, %99 of the time you don’t even need to think about it as a separate issue. Only in exceedingly complex cases would I even consider using a specific Alpha channel layer.

I usually avoid creating Alpha Channels in Photoshop by saving in PNG format.

First, there's no such thing as an "alpha channel layer". Layers and channels are entirely different things.

Second, there are countless situations in which keeping the transparency map as a separate element from all the color maps is tremendously advantageous. That's why the alpha channel work flow has been a staple of the graphics industry for decades.

Third, that same work flow applies to all kinds of things in 3D and 2D graphics besides transparency. By deliberately not learning it, you're handicapping yourself in so many ways, I can't even count them. Do yourself a favor and learn the proper methodology.

As for your question on why people think it's hard, I don't think anyone really does. I'll grant you it's not quite intuitive for those who are new to all this, so naturally there are lots of questions about it, but it's certainly not hard. Once the concept is well explained, nearly everyone gets it right away. It's a five-second process at most, even for the most complicated alpha you could possibly imagine. 90% of the time, it's a three-click procedure, which takes less than a second or two to perform.

However, if one is really, really, really decidedly against learning or using the concept, then as has been mentioned, there are ways around it. Using the PNG format is one option.

I will agree with you though that trying to make a proper alpha channel in GIMP is quite a chore. Just understand, that's not the case in other programs. Again, it might not be immediately obvious to someone who's just starting out with ANY graphics program, but just because a thing needs to be explained the first time around doesn't mean that that thing won't turn out to be easy to do. In most programs, making alpha channels is very, very easy. It just takes a little know-how is all.

GIMP, in my experience, seems to be the lone exception. For all its great success as such a powerful graphics app, which happens to be free, it's got more than its fair share of interface issues, and channel editing is near the top of the list. Notice I have yet to put a tutorial for GIMP in the transparency guide at the top of the forum. That's because I haven't yet been able to figure out a decent non-WYSIWYG work flow for it. I consider this inability to work outside of WYSIWYG to be a major disadvantage of GIMP. Not only does it make standard work flow difficult, but it seems to encourage its users to think of standards as meaningless or even silly things which should be ignored. That's dangerous. At best it makes it difficult for GIMP users to communicate very effectively with users of other programs; at worst it renders them unlikely ever to get a job in the industry should they wish to do so.

Someone recently suggested making use of the Decompose & Compose commands for the purpose of making channels editable in GIMP, but I haven't gotten around to playing with it to verify. From the description, it sounds like somewhat of a round-about process, but it should work. If the procedure works well, I'll document it in the transparency guide.



Anyway, the reason I put "alpha channel slave" as my title was not because I myself have any problem with alpha channels. It was because, for whatever reason, I've been the one who's spent the most time answering questions on that topic. Every time I see someone struggling with such a simple thing, I feel compelled to jump in and help out. So all I meant was I'm a "slave" to teaching the same thing over and over and over again. Since the guide was stickied, the questions have become far less frequent, so maybe it's time for a new title.

One note, in most of Chosen's posts advising people to use alpha channels instead of just simple transparency he mentions a process that only takes seconds, and it always irks me a bit. Although that is technically correct, it's misleading. Describing the process of making an alpha channel as only taking seconds is sort of like describing the process of drawing a sketch as only taking seconds. True, it only takes seconds to draw the lines of the sketch, but that doesn't mean it didn't take you a lot of practice to develop the skill to draw it correctly, or that you won't have to spend a lot of time erasing and redoing the drawing to tweak things. Don't want you to have a mistaken impression of the level of effort involved.

Still, I very much agree with everything else he said. Trust me, I don't just use alpha channels for transparency because I've never tried any other way. I've been doing textures for 3D graphics and/or games for years, and I've long found that alpha channels are far superior to simple transparency for myriad reasons.

I mean, that's true of Chosen too certainly, so now you have two seasoned experts telling you the same thing.

From the original the original posters question I was under the impression that the issue was more to do with creating transparencies (assumption based on finding ancient unused copy of PS). Many people new to texture creation seem to regard creating transparent textures and the use of Alpha Channels as synonymous, which it certainly is not.

Exporting to PNG (or any other format) should only be done at the end of the creation process; working and archival copies are best kept in the Gimps native file format. Saving files in most other formats leads to the loss of layers etc. Recommending working with PNG as an alternative solution is misleading.

Granted standards are to be encouraged, but the general principles are the same no matter what application is being used to generate the final product. The overall knowledge is what counts, and learning a new application once the underlying principles are understood is not hard. On a professional level (in any industry and with any Software) I would be gravely concerned with any employee that said they couldn’t use brand X because they only knew how to use brand Y.

What ever the Gimps short comings, it’s not worth spending 500 plus USD on Photoshop for a little dabbling in texture creation.