How To Use Alpha Tops

Okay for those of you that have been waiting breathlessly, finally, with the help of a kind person in-world resolved this issue for me. Apparently my version of CS3-Standard Version handles .tga files in a different fashion then older versions of photoshop. When I uploaded the black top to my computer, the alpha portion was black causing the whole thing to be useless. To fix this issue, required a download of a file format plug-in...the plug-in handled the .tga files in the older manner. Once it was installed, it resolved the issue making the alpha portion white so I could see what I was working with.

I am sure there is/was another way to handle this issue, but like many others in the past, I just don't understand working with alpha channels as of yet. One baby step at a time.

Slowly, but surely, I am learning photoshop. Could not do it without everyone that reads and offers solutions to those of us that have questions.

Hugs to you ALL
Morgaine

Um..... that doesn't sound good. CS3 doesn't handle TGA files any differently than previous versions of Photoshop. And "making the alpha portion white" doesn't make any sense to me at all. (Of course, "the alpha portion was black" doesn't make any sense either.) There's something seriously weird going on.

Apparently my version of CS3-Standard Version handles .tga files in a different fashion then older versions of photoshop.

When I uploaded the black top to my computer, the alpha portion was black causing the whole thing to be useless.

To fix this issue, required a download of a file format plug-in...the plug-in handled the .tga files in the older manner. Once it was installed, it resolved the issue making the alpha portion white so I could see what I was working with.

DO NOT INSTALL THAT FILE! If you install that plug-in, you will FUBAR your Photoshop. Stay away from it at all cost.

The file in question is the TGA saver utility from Photoshop 7.0, which was Adobe's one and only experiment with changing the way alpha channels are created and displayed. It was in existence officially for just 3 months, and it was by far the biggest blunder in Adobe's history. Adobe realized their mistake almost instantly, and corrected the problem with the free 7.0.1 upgrade, but unfortunately the damage still lingers (as is evidenced in this thread). Files created with created with that utility suffer the following problems:

1. They will have visual artifacts in them which will be impossible to correct, the most common of which is a white halo surrounding the opaque parts of the image.

2. The files will be incompatible with most graphics applications. Instead of real alpha channels, which have been a staple of the graphics industry for decades, and so can be understood by nearly all graphics programs, those 7.0-style files contain a proprietary element called an "embedded alpha", which almost no program on Earth can read. It's only by an utter miracle of conicidental timing that SL can read those files at all. The relevant part of SL happened to have been under development at during that short 3-month period when PS 7.0 was current.

3. People who use the embedded alpha work flow do so primarily because they mistakenly think it's a time saver. In truth, it is not a significant time saver at all since making an alpha channel only takes a few seconds at most. Learning to use alpha channels might not be intuitive for most people at first, but really, once you learn how to do it, it's incredibly quick and easy. It's not rocket science.

4. For images with complicated transparency levels, like stained glass windows, for example, the embedded alpha work flow actually makes the process take MUCH longer than it takes to make a real alpha channel.

5. Very importantly, embedded alpha work flow encourages destructive habits. By disallowing you the ability to create and edit alpha channels properly, it ends up costing you an enormous amount of control and flexibility. There are countless situations in which working directly on the alpha channel itself allows you to do things you could never otherwise do in any reasonable amount of time, if at all.

6. Once installed, that 7.0 plugin effectively destroys your ability to every again work properly with real alpha channels should you ever choose to do so. Even if you remove it, PS won't behave entirely properly afterwards. The only recourse is to completely uninstall PS and then reinstall it all over again. What a pain.

7. Files containing embedded alphas are prone to sudden, irreversible data corruption. I have no idea why, but they often end up with colored lines spontaneously appearing across any white space in the image. Once that happens, the file is toast. You can manually erase the lines, but as soon as you close the file and reopen it, they come back.


So, once again, DO NOT INSTALL THAT FILE!!! It is nothing but trouble.

Now, can we please, please, please, please never speak of it again?


If you're really deadset against using alpha channels, then instead of borking your Photoshop with that horrendously dangerous plugin, just use the PNG format instead of TGA. PNG supports both alpha transparency and simple transparency. With PNG's simple transparency, you work entirely with WYSIWYG, and you never have to worry about any of the problems associated with embedded alphas.

I am sure there is/was another way to handle this issue, but like many others in the past, I just don't understand working with alpha channels as of yet. One baby step at a time.

Slowly, but surely, I am learning photoshop. Could not do it without everyone that reads and offers solutions to those of us that have questions.

Hugs to you ALL
Morgaine

Well said Chosen Few!
I guess people never read the stickies - but that is human nature anyway.

For those who need classes (you know who you are) in Photoshop please refer to the following links:

Alpha Channels:

http://www.planetphotoshop.com/design-with-alpha-channel.html

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshop/l/bllps504h.htm

http://nicolaescher.com/tutorials/alpha-channel-primer.php

Please keep in mind that alpha channels are so much more than just a simple mask. For SL they indicate transparency - but for other industries (print), they can do a lot more. For people just starting to learn PS, I believe that this concept is hard for them to understand and gets muddied. Like Chosen Few said - use PNG transparency if you are unsure about alpha channels and how to use them. Although that being said - you're robbing yourself of some of the most powerful capabilities that Photoshop and other image editing software have to offer.

Photoshop Tutorials:

www.pixel2life.com
http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/tutorialspshop.asp
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?browse&section_id=6
and.... www.google.com yes google. Just type in a question - and you get answers.

The only version of PS ever to handle TGA files differently was 7.0. All 15 other versions, since 1988, have handled them exactly the same way, including CS3. 7.0 was the only oddball.


Either you made your alpha channel incorrectly, or you're seeing the palletized texture bug. Based on what you said in the rest of your post, I'm guessing it's the former.



Here we go again. Just when I think that thing is dead and gone, it resurfaces.

Morgaine, please don't take anything I'm about to say the wrong way. None of it is meant to question your intelligence or put you down in any way, but some of it might sound like that. Please take it for what it is, a straight-forward explanation of the facts of your current situation, nothing more, nothing less. Basically, you installed something you didn't know would be bad, but it is.

Here's what has become my standard reply for whenever this subject comes up (yes, I'm about to quote myself):





Here's what I would urge you to do:

1. Uninstall and reinstall your Photoshop immediately, to restore all proper functionality.

2. From this point on, use PNG instead of TGA as your output format. That will give you the WYSIWYG functionality you're looking for, without having to break anything in your Photoshop.

3. When you're ready to get back to learning how to use alpha channels, you'll be able to. I would strongly recommend you do that, since the process offers far more control, and saves a lot of time, over WYSIWYG methodology. But in the mean time, PNG will do the trick for you.



Thanks for the sentiment. Again, I'm sorry to have had to point out what a big mistake that plugin is. You're not the first to have been enticed by it, and you probably won't be the last. Even the folks at Adobe thought it was a good idea at the time they created it, and so did I when I first got PS 7. It didn't take long for any of us to discover what a disaster it was, though. I hope this post will spare you having to learn the hard way like we did.

Thank you! Nothing personal taken. I was getting the impression that others might be thinking I might be trying to rip off the creations of another by asking about this issue and wanted to clarify it is more of a learning tool for me. I know how frustrating this must be to all of you experienced folks and apologize for bringing up a dead past issue. And, yes, I do use .png until I can learn the proper way to use alpha channels.

That never even crossed my mind, Morgaine. In fact, I was puzzled about why you brought it up this morning. You posed a VERY curious question in your intial post, and I've been struggling to make sense of it. As I go back over the thread, it seems to me that Chosen has given you the most solid advice. If you really have installed that Photoshop 7.0 plugin, as he suspects, please reinstall Photoshop now and get rid of it. It is NOT the cure that you think it is.

If you're really interested in learning to fly Photoshop well, why not see if there's a short course you can take at your local community or technical college, or perhaps in a community adult ed program? I know it might not be as much fun as learning by trial and error, but it's likely to be MUCH less frustrating. Courses like that aren't just for budding professonals. There are lots of people like you and me who use Photoshop for personal enjoyment. Sometimes we learn better in a classroom than from a manual. Just a thought.