What am I doing wrong????

I have been working on making a tube top. I use Paint Shop Pro and have been freely drawing my clothing. Once I have my shirt how I want I create a mask layer off the image and fill the clothing areas white and the rest black. But when i upload it in SL and put it on my AV you can still see all the white under from the shirt I add the texture to. It's like the alpha channel is not working correctly...and I do leave it showing when I merge all layers and upload. What am I doing wrong???

Hi Taylor,

Sounds like it might be a problem when saving your file but first, I have to ask the obvious question to cover all basis

Are you sure you are using an alpha channel and not a layer mask? Many people apply a layer mask to a layer and commonly mistake that for an alpha channel. Although it appears to be the same thing when you are working in a graphics program, they do not serve the same purpose when saving. So, first, make sure you have an alpha channel

If the alpha channel is where it is supposed to be, then, the problem is probably in how you save your file. Make sure you save it as a 32 bit .tga file. Any other file format won't support transparency, hence things showing up white despite the alpha channel. Your .tga also needs to be 32 bit to support the alpha channel (saving in 24 bit will just grab the RGB channels and won't save your alpha...again, making things white instead of transparent).

Hope this made sense (I always feel like I'm the worst person on earth to explain things in writing!) and I hope this solves your issue.

Good luck!

In PSP, once you have the mask you need to convert it to an alpha channel. I'm assuming that you already know how to create the mask from the image. You still need to:

1. Delete any existing alpha channels in the image.
2. Select the mask layer
3. Under the layer menu, select Save to Alpha Channel
4. Save as a .tga file

It's a bit of a pain, but it's important to delete other alpha channels. Since the .tga file can only hold one, PSP just picks one - which may not be the one you want.

Thank you both so much. I was just creating the mask layer and never turned it into the Alpha Channel. Thanks for your help!!!!

Well...i turned my mask into an alpha channel and the white is till showing.......((

if you post a screenshot of the tubetop is psp, I can help.
Make sure all other layers are off (an x over the eye) before you save.