Woops, unable to create alphas?! o.0

Okay, hi everyone

I have a question.

I have been doing alpha texturing for... ever. (a long time anyways)

Last night i had been working on some new clothes and everything was fine. I started to work on a new outfit, went to create an alpha, and i had the little circle with the \ through it when i hovered over the icon.

So, after my short panic attack, i started a little troubleshooting.

I checked to make sure i was on RGB (i was)
I checked to make sure that i only had one single layer selected (i did)
I made a new document and tried to make an alpha (no go)
I restarted photoshop (didnt work)
I restarted my computer (nothing)
I tried to 'repair' my photoshop by going through CP then Add/remove - repair (nothing)
I googled for about two hours on the subject and came up with no answers.

I am guessing that this is a settings problem that i had changed unknowingly last night. I am wondering if ANYONE has any knowledge of how to fix this?

I would just uninstall/run reg cleaner/reinstall, but from past run ins with photoshop, ive learned that once a setting is made, it stays even after a re-install.

By the way, im using Ps Cs2.

Any help would be SUPER GREATLY appreciated! Thanks in advance.

Had this once, although this might not be your problem, => Image => Mode => 16 Bits/Channel was the problem, switched it to 8 Bits/Channel, but if your texture is already .tga this won't be the problem.

If I can think of anything else I'll post it.

Thanks Dekka, i tried that (with my fingers crossed) but alast, it didnt work

I'm still googling, and trying my best to troubleshoot though.. Hopefully ill figure this out! hehe

Angel, let me get this straight. You're saying that when you hover your mouse over the Create New Channel button, the cursor changes to a slashed circle, and you can't click the button? I've never heard of that.

The only reason I could think of why it might not work would be if you're in the process of performing an unfinished action, such as a transform or a filter or something, and you haven't applied it yet. In that case, until you hit Enter or OK, whichever one the particular action requires, most things won't be clickable, including the Create New Channel button. It doesn't seem like that's what's happening though, since you say you've restarted the program, and the problem has persisted. Also, you'd probably have noticed that most menu items would be grayed out.

Are you positive you're not hovering over the wrong button. Save Selection As Channel is right next to it, and that one won't be unclickable unless you actually have something selected. The Create New Channel button itself should always be clickable, no matter what.

Try this. Instead of clicking on the button at the bottom of the palette, click on the one at the upper right, next to where all the tabs are, the one that looks like a little black triangle with three lines next to it. That's the button for the flyout menu. Every palette in PS has one. In the Channels palette's flyout menu, the first command on the list is New Channel. What happens if you click that?

Also try this. Select the entire canvas (ctrl-a), and then go Select -> Save Selection. In the dialog that pops up, set it to save the selection as a new channel. Name the channel whatever you want, and hit OK. What happens. Does a new channel appear?

If either of the above two procedures worked, then you know you're able to create new channels just fine. Perhaps you've got a glitch in you GUI somehow, preventing you from pressing buttons. If neither worked, then I'm stumped for the moment.



As for what you said about settings persisting after reinstalling, that shouldn't be possible. Photoshop's settings are stored in your %windir%\Documents and Settings\~username\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop\[version #]\Adobe Photoshop [version #] Settings folder. That folder should be deleted when Photoshop uninstalls. Perhaps you experienced a malfunction during an uninstallation once, and that folder somehow remained intact instead of getting emptied and deleted like it was supposed to.

In any case, you can clear your PS settings at any time either by deleting the contents of that folder by hand, or by holding ctrl-alt-shift while the program is starting. If you do the latter, a dialog will pop up, asking if you want to delete your settings. Hit OK, and all the settings will be returned to factory default.

Hey Chosen Few!

Thank you for all of your suggestions! I tried both the flyout menu and selecting then saving an entire canvas, unfortunately neither of these worked.

The weirdest, however is i decided that i would just start fresh and use your ctrl - alt - shift method. It reset everything to factory but i still didn't have the option to make an alpha. So instead i decided i would try to hand delete anything that hadn't already been deleted. I navigated to my folder and nothing was in it.

I am still having the problem which is odd. I will keep working on a way to fix it and post here in case i find an answer (If anyone else happens to run into this problem in the future).

I have another PC that i can get alpha's done on for now, which is better than having nothing! hehe

I can only imagine this is setting related... and no clue how to fix it.

but for a stupid trick, have you tried opening a file you know has an alpha channel in it, and tried to edit that? it might kick the program out of whatever setting it's in. at worst it'd lock you out of that images alpha channel too, which would almost confirm that it's a setting.

Okay, i tried that one, and about half of my alpha files will not even open in ps anymore..BUT the ones that will do let me mess with the alpha.. I even saved it and checked to see if my alpha changes would be saved with it, and it was.

This is odd though, because i tried it on 5 of the same images (Same exact image/same alpha) just that the 5 images had different color schemes (They are shirt textures) and half worked, half didnt... Odd!

very, but that would seem to lead back to a setting based on color depth, or possibly a forcing the use of a format within the app other than the native one (ie one that only supports certain options, like specific bit depths).... and I don't even know that PS can do that (sorry I don't have it).

short of figuring out what the exact difference between the files that will and won't open is (like maybe checking them on another computer, or finding their type AND version) am at a loss... that's bizarre

Angel, did you ever at any time install a plugin to make alpha channels automatically? If so, that could be your problem right there. That thing causes so many problems, the people distributing it should all be rounded up and shot. I've never heard of it causing this particular issue, but it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility. It does dramatically alter the way Photoshop approaches the concept of channels, after all. I have heard of it manifesting some pretty bizarre behavior over the years.

Either way, it sounds like you need to uninstall Photoshop and reinstall it at this point. If it's refusing to open files, something is very, very wrong. I don't think you'll be able to fix it any other way. It sounds to me like the program itself has been damaged.