Transparency images

Hi, I was trying to make one of my own tops with transparency so that some of the skintone would show, but when I uploaded it, the transparent part turned to white and made the skintone also look white. I don't know why it did this, but I made sure it was transparent, and even in the previewer the transparent part was working and you could not see the shaded out areas. But then when it was uploaded it changed the image background to white.

Does anyone know why it did this? I saved it as a targa file .tga since it didn't allow .gif files. Any help is appreciated

Thanks!

did you create an alpha channel? and are you talking about fully transparent? or partially? as in, are there pieces 'cut out' of the 'cloth' or is it supposed to be a sheer material?

Also make sure you're saving the TGA as 32 bit and not 24 bit. Only 32 bit preserves the alpha channel.

Be careful if you grayscaled your image. That automatically makes it save as 24-bit TGA in Photoshop, and the only way to make it save as 32-bit is to convert it back to RGB.

ohh ok, well I saved mine in color, but in 24 bit, since I wasn't sure what the difference did. and also I was trying to make the cut out part of the cloth completely transparent.

okay well I'll try again, this time saving it in 32 bit. Thanks a bunch for the help =)

ok, I tried it once again..this time in 32 bit .tga file. It did the same thing, turning the transparent part to white again..darn..wasted another $10

would this possibly have anything to do with alpha channels? because I'm not even sure what alpha channels are, to be honest..hehe

okay thanks

Oh, that would explain it then

If you're using Photoshop, go to 'Channels' and then 'create new channel' It will give you an entirely black image. You want the parts you want to see to be white. You can also work with it so the black parts are a red tint. It takes some playing around, and I'm not so great at explaining these things. My guess would be your image editor's help files will explain it better than I.

Oki, thanks actually I was just now reading the help files about them. I'll try it again, hopefully it'll work this time

thanks!

Something that might help you make the alpha channel: if you have the artwork for your shirt on its own layer and you can turn off the background so you see the transparency and the default checkerboard pattern behind it, try control-clicking the thumbnail for your shirt's layer to select that art, then go to the new all black alpha channel, and use that selection to delete the parts you need transparent. That's quicker than trying to paint an alpha channel by hand.

To save your $10 each time you upload, when you get the preview of your texture check whether the transparent parts show that same checkerboard pattern. Also, there's a pulldown menu that lets you preview the texture on different body parts and you can see if it looks right before you commit to uploading. That way you can fix it and only upload once.

okay, thanks a bunch for the help..it finally worked hehe

I wonder if there is a website or PDF that is availiable with details to just the Alpha stuff, and Channels?

This post explained making the appropriate alpha channels for my garments perfectly.

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I should also say thanks again for such a great guide. It gave me all the information I needed to jump off the deep end and start making my own clothing.

An alpha channel is a pixel-for-pixel mask over the image pixels. Where a pixel of the alpha mask is black (0), the corresponding Red, Green, and Blue pixels of the image are not displayed -- and hence transparent to whatever is under it.

Where a pixel of the alpha is white (255), the matching color of image is fully displayed, and fully hides whatever is under it.

The keen thing is that if an alpha pixel is some shade of gray, the matching part of the image is only partly used, so translucent. For example, you can get the effect of tinted glass by making a solid color and setting its alpha to 80% gray.

You can go to your image and use the magic wand tool to select a particular color or range of colors. Then switch to the alpha channel and fill the selection with white or black or gray -- thus making exactly those selected colors clear, solid, or translucent. So, if you had an image of a green fishnet on a white background, you could select all the white, and then make that disappear leaving just the fishnet colors.

In photoshop, you can paint on the alpha channel with the brush or pencil, or fill it with the paint bucket, or you can lay a black-to-white gradient with the gradient tool -- and you can use any other photoshop filter on the alpha channel, so for example you can blur it with Gaussian Blur to soften the edges of the effect.