WTH is a alpha channel?

im sorry to sound like such a newb to graphics after working in photoshop for ten years, what in the heck is a alpha channel? is it a fancy name for a transparent or see through doohicky in a game? i thought that was just levels of transparency or opacity? maybe im just not up on game terms.......

and also isnt that what you use the png file format for? for saving transparent images and animations in the game?

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Morvera ner Morden

10 Years and no knowledge of (url="http://"http://coldroom.150m.com/CGE_Stuff/CGE_Tips.html#Q27")Alpha Channels(/url)?

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Just pimpin' my (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/dampeoples/iblog/dampeoples")blog(/url),(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/dampeoples/damcam.html")voyeur cam(/url), and (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/dampeoples/Sterling/Menu19.html")stuff(/url)

okay, i think i get it. so formats like pngs and jpg2000 support that kinda thing and thats supported in coldstone. so in the end that means you can save fancy graphics that are see through in coldstone like in a .psd with transparency. so then any image format that supports alpha channels is basically saying it supports transparencies. wth........

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Morvera ner Morden

actually they must be saved in .png far as i know, any attempt to open a PhotoShop document(.psd) using quicktime tech will result in message stating similar "you need photoshop to view/edit this file" this will be in place of the actual document, followed by the same translated into several languages.

so then any image format that supports alpha channels is basically saying it supports transparencies. wth........

not really, you can save multiple formats with an alpha channel...that don't necessarily support them;

GIFs which support transparency can have an alpha channel as well, but you won't be able to view them...only browsers that can are IE mac edition, and iCab.

picts can have an alpha channel, it will permutate the colors in the image,red becomes yellow, white becomes blue...as such white will not be white and therefroe you forfeit transparency.

the alpha channel as far as PhotoShop is concerned is just a good way to permanenetly save multiple selections/masks within qa single file...ie if you were doing a gradual dissolve effect you could mask out the areas instead of creating a multitude of layers, which because of them being greyscale are in general much smaller.(load selection/save selection)

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...(list)
()(url="http://"http://www.geocities.com/ellrx/index.html")eLL' softWare.(/url)
(
)(url="http://"http://www.geocities.com/ellrx/index.html")Par eLL' el(/url)
(*)eLL' softWare: Plotting and scheming since 1998

ughhh.....head....hurts...... im so going to avoid technical schtick in the future. thats it, im going back to drawling! thats right, drawling!

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Morvera ner Morden

Quote

Originally posted by ellrx:
**actually they must be saved in .png far as i know, any attempt to open a PhotoShop document(.psd) using quicktime tech will result in message stating similar "you need photoshop to view/edit this file" this will be in place of the actual document, followed by the same translated into several languages.
**

What version of QT? I can get .psd's generated from Photoshop to open in Quicktime just fine. I'm using V6.1 on 10.2.4.

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Just pimpin' my (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/dampeoples/iblog/dampeoples")blog(/url),(url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/dampeoples/damcam.html")voyeur cam(/url), and (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/dampeoples/Sterling/Menu19.html")stuff(/url)

Quote

Originally posted by DJ:
so then any image format that supports alpha channels is basically saying it supports transparencies.

Practically speaking, yes.

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