Help with Halo please.

I have searched and read and there used to be a link to a video turtorial on how to use the Gaussian Blur to get rid of the halo but when I click on the link it says no longer available. Does anyone know of another or can tell me the few steps to do so i can get rid of the halo. I have to use the Blurr but forgot how I did it and my dog ate my notes.:/ I would appreciate the help thanks

Leah - do you mean that your transparent texture has a halo around it? You can fix that quite easily without using gaussian blur. You can fix/prevent this by creating a layer below your texture and make it a dark colour that is close to the main colour of your actual texture. After doing that, simply make your alpha channel and save as 32bit TGA.

I think I remember this tutorial It was on Robin Sojourner's site. I just visited there, and she seems to have replaced it with a newer (nonvideo) tutorial. If you are interested, you can see it here:

http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLPages/WhiteHalo1.html

(she does not use the Gaussian Blur technique anymore; she simply runs the Solidify Pear plugin)

Btw, I know that .tga transparencies can cause halos. But what about .png ones? We can upload .png files to SL now. Does this format cause halos too? I have not done any transparencies lately, but I have been meaning to test this.

Good question. For clarity, it's not the TGA format itself that causes the haloing; it's improper use of alpha channels. Proper work flow with alpha transparency includes bleeding your colors past the edges of the channel's selection mask (the white part), do allow the mask to anti-alias properly with all the colors fully accounted for.

Unfortunately, most people are not aware of this since it's not immediately obvious if you've never been trained on it. So people do it incorrectly, and they end up with halos. The problem is so common, in fact, that many video editing programs actually have their own built-in de-haloing methods, since alpha transparency is so often used in video, and since so many people do it wrong.

The PNG format supports both alpha transparency and simple transparency. I've never tried it, but theoretically, using alpha transparency improperly in a PNG would likely result in the same issues as using it improperly in other formats. With simple transparency, you'll pretty much never end up with a halo, but you also sacrifice a lot of control. Transparency ends up being considered one of the colors in the image, rather than being a separate sheet of information. This makes things simpler to understand right away, hence the name, but it also means you have nowhere near the flexibility you would have if your transparency map could be edited separately from everything else.

Thanks for the answers but I was hopeing for that video it was so easy to understand (some learn beter by viewing ) I have PS7 so has auto Alpha and yes I know there is a patch but cant use it. I was just hopeing that the video was still around or another simular. I will look at that link though. Thanks again

Well I went and looked and it does not explain the steps to do the method I need. She says to download the free patch to 7.1 but that is it. As I cannot do that I need the steps she had in that tutoral. Does anyone remember them?

Leah, if you're using 7.0, the video tutorial wouldn't be applicable for you, even if it were still available. 7.0 forces you to use WYSIWYG for transparency. The instant you apply that blur, or any other method of de-haloing, you'll change the visible transparency in the image, which will in turn change the alpha channel. There's simply no way around that in 7.0, which is one of the many reasons you should absolutely NOT be using it.

What's the reason you can't download the patch? It's completely free at adobe.com.

If you're running under Windows, you can download the full patch at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1851 or you can grab just the TGA fix at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1544

If you're a Mac user, then the full patch is at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1852 or the TGA fix is at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=1543

All adobe patches are always free. There's no reason I could think of why you couldn't download any one you want.


If by "can't use it" you meant not actually that you can't, but that you just don't understand how to make alpha channels, then ask away. Read the sticky at the top of the forum if you haven't already. It's got five different tutorials for Photoshop in it, and all the general information you need. If there's any part of it you don't understand or that you can't follow, just ask. At least give it a try before deciding you can't do it.

Thousands of people make alpha channels every day, and while I don't know anything about you in particular, I can't imagine that at least SOME of those people wouldn't be less capable than you probably are. If they can do it, so can you, and we're here to help.

I appreciate all the help here and that you are trying to do for me Chosen, but I was really hopeing that this wouldn't happen and didnt want to get into why I cant use the patch but since I cant just get the steps that I need I will tell you why.

Well first before I do I have used the steps before and it worked quite well with 7.0. I do understand how adimit you and others are about 7.0 and the patch but you also have to understand sometimes as good as your answer is for the problem it just wont work for all.

I cannot put the patch on because it is not my computer or my program. I have talked until im blue to try and get the owner to download the patch and explained why and it is no use they will not consider it and does not want to hear anymore about the issue. It is very frustrateing to me that they will not and then that being the only answer I get is to do it. LOL I feel like I'm in a no win situation. Dammed if I do and Dammed if I dont

So I am stuck with working with what I have and that is asking for those steps that have worked for me in the past but have forgotten and lost the notes on how to do. Please Please can I just have the steps needed? That is the help I need at the moment. I really hate to beg but I am begging...... Please Please Please.

Ah yes! I did not think of this. Thanks.

Leah, I don't think that tutorial was meant for PS7 :/ It was meant for later versions. It pretty much went along like the current tutorial, with the exception that, in the end, she used to apply the Gaussian Blur filter to get rid of the halo instead of the plugin that she now uses. But since you cannot use anything other than PS7, this tutorial or the Gaussian Blur technique won't be useful to you. I cannot create a PS7 tutorial for alphas and halos :/ Perhaps someone else can. But I have this suggestion: how about PNGs? It seems to me to be your best option. And it is soooo easy. It's a WYSIWYG format. Just make a transparent background, paint your texture like you want it (with opaque and transparent areas), save as .png and upload. That's it. No need to worry about any alphas or halos. And PS7 can do it.

Leah, it's unfortunate that the owner of the program is unwilling to upgrade it. That must be really frustrating for you.

As Emily and I have both said now, the Gaussian blur technique shouldn't work with 7.0, but if you really want to try it, here's what to do:

1. Do everything Robin's tutorial says, right up to the point where she says to run the Solidify filter.

2. Duplicate the flattened foreground layer, and put the duplicate underneath the original in the stack. Make sure the duplicate is active (highlighted in the stack).

3. Instead, of Solidify, go Filter -> Blur - Gaussian Blur. In the dialog that pops up, make sure the Preview checkbox is checked so you can see what's happening on the canvas. Play with the Radius setting until you can see color from the bottom layer bleeding out from around the edges of the top layer.

4. The pixels in the bleed area at this point will be very transparent. To make them more opaque, duplicate the blurred layer a bunch of times, and merge all the duplicates. Do NOT merge the original top layer into the bunch. Leave that layer alone.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 a bunch of times until the bleed area is sufficiently wide and solid looking. Don't be afraid to overdo it.

6. Save as 32-bit TGA and upload to SL.

As I said, I doubt this will work with 7.0, but you can certainly try it if you want.

If it doesn't work, then your other option, as Emily said, is to use PNG, and work WYSIWYG style. As I said earlier, you have less control that way than with alpha channel work flow, but since you don't have that kind of control with 7.0 anyway, there's really nothing lost for you. One nice thing about PNG's simple transparency is that it produces no haloing, and you don't have to worry about any of 7.0's compatibility issues or stability problems with the way it creates TGA's.

I've been dying for this information too (as seen in sticky post). Sad that the video doesn't work -- but the info is priceless. It's always good to have different options!
Thanks Leah for asking & thanks Chosen for answering.

How do you do this bleeding?

btw: I have used black background, and I do use the flaming pears plugin and solidify

My problem is that often the white halo is in the image itself, and the alpha layer includes that bit of the real image, so even doing the gaussian blue trick doesn't work unless you fiddle with layer blending in photoshop, which usually looks crappy. So the "bleeding" sounds good because it means moving the color of the image out into the white fringe on the image. I am wondering if there is a way of doing this other than solidify.

As Chosen just confirmed for me in another thread, one answer is to avoid creating the halo in the first place. Just be sure that your "fabric" extends beyond the edges of the clothing pieces that it is on. If the margins of the opaque (non-black) areas in your alpha channel don't ever intersect with places where there are no pixels on your visible layers, there will never be a halo. (Wow! A triple negative .... read that sentence carefully.) Don't mask the fabric to the size and shape of the blouse or pants or whatever you are working on. Let it fill the entire canvas. You won't need to use a Flaming Pear plug-in or a Gaussian blur or whatever -- at all.

Extending past the area needed for the clothing works fine unless your doing something fancy like fishnet. Or doing a half shirt, shorts so on so forth. In those instances the only thing that will work simply and easily is to place a spare channel under all of the others color the entire thing to the base color or a semi matching color of the outfit. Then you hide this layer until after you have done the mask and saved to alpha, after that you simply reveal the hidden layer and save as a TGA.

Alternately you make the hidden layer another color and you can create a rather interesting two tone look to your fishnet or other partial clothing.

I don't make clothing. This is for stuff like wallpapers with windows in them that have bits cut out to see through, or trees and flowers. It happens when you select and cut something from an image -- even when you aren't feathering it. My textures often come from photographs, and I removed stuff using "select color" in photoshop, followed by "cut."

Backtrack to previously cleared areas for ammo, weapons, and health. Hide while your shield recharges. Advance and retreat to lead enemies to your traps. Always look for a safer way in before you run into an area full of enemies. And remember: Use grenades to your advantage.

The same technique would apply for what you're doing, Poppet. Go ahead and cut out the flowers or whatever from your photo so it's full of holes -- it is now a mask. Then select all pixels in that holey mask and do Layer >> Save Selection to create your alpha channel. Then TURN OFF the mask. You don't need it any more because the alpha channel is going to do all the work from now on. Be sure that the original photo is in a layer somewhere, the photo without any holes cut in it. Save the file in 32 bit Targa format and upload. The black areas in the alpha layer you created will cut neat transparent "holes" when viewed in world, and you won't have any white halos at all.

There's really no trick here. The only reason you have been getting haloes in your holes is that there aren't any pixels in them on any layer in your file. When the black area in the alpha channel overlays a transparent (empty) space, THAT's when you get a halo -- so DON'T LEAVE ANY EMPTY SPACE. (If it really makes you nervous that you can't see any holes, you can always *temporarily* turn your mask on again to check, or you can go to the Channels palette and click the little eye icon on the alpha channel to make it visible. Just remember to turn them off again before you save the Targa file.)

A big advantage of letting the alpha channel do the "cutting" for you is that it is cutting pixels that are ALREADY a good color match for the ones adjacent to the cut edge. You didn't have to blur pixels or solidify them to fill a hole in your mask, and you didn't have to put a spare color layer that "almost" matches under it.

Emap mentions one of the few situations I can imagine when you might want to use a different method, although I'm tempted to try making a pair of fishnet stockings my way just for the heck of it.

Hi Everyone! Sorry that I've been neglecting this thread.

About the video; I took it down because it was outdated, and a fair number of people couldn't see it properly anyway. However, since people kept asking, I put a zipped copy on the site.

I don't recommend it; but if you really want it, you can grab it at
http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLDownloads/TranspForSL.zip

The download should start as soon as you click on that link (if you can do that) or copy and paste it into your URL bar.

Poppet, if the problem is that there are white pixels left on your image from the Extraction process, you need to get rid of them or nothing will keep them from showing in SL.

There are several ways to do that, but the ones that I've found best for SL are in the Layer menu.

Just select the layer with the image that has the unfortunate pixels on the edge, and then go to Layer > Matting (it's all the way at the bottom.) If the image was extracted from a white background, use Remove White Matte. Otherwise use Defringe, at one pixel.

Then run the Flaming Pear filters. If there's still white around the edges (which will be obvious) Undo, and use Defringe again, increasing the pixel value if you think you need to Sometimes it just works when you run it again, and sometimes it's still not enough, depending on the image. (I've never had to go above 2, and 1 usually does it, but images vary.)

That will take care of the problem. (Your Alpha Channel is probably fine, I wouldn't touch it. )

Hope this helps!

Thanks so much, everyone! Hard to believe I have been texturing for nearly 2 years, isn't it? :\ Still feel that I am learning the fundamentals.

Thanks again!