   Painting program that supports transparency alpha channel
  Ok, so I''ve let my tile engine support an alpha channel for semi-transparency of objects... but now I don''t find a painting program that will allow me to make semi-transparent objects!I''ve got photoshop 6.0, but I''m not sure how to do it there (in such a way that you can see the alpha channel being transparent)Does there exist some freeware program that lets you easily create and edit raw files with 4 channels in it (r,g,b and alpha), shows you the effect of the transparency, and preferably starts out with a fully transparent tile before you begin drawing on it.Thanks 
  I think Gimp would do everything that you want (at least after you tweak the settings a bit). ;  Gimp is free (as in beer, speech, and association); Paint Shop Pro is cheap (as in money).For photoshop, a couple of things to keep in mind:* Images can be created as "transparent". If they are created with a background color, there''ll be a layer called "background" which cannot have its transparency edited. To change that, just doubleclick the background layer in the layer palette and click ok and it''ll switch to a regular layer.* You can set what "transparent" looks like in the preferences window. The default is a neutral-gray-and-white checkerboard pattern.   "Sneftel is correct, if rather vulgar." --Flarelocke ;quote:Original post by SneftelGimp is free (as in beer, speech, and association); Paint Shop Pro is cheap (as in money).For photoshop, a couple of things to keep in mind:* Images can be created as "transparent". If they are created with a background color, there'll be a layer called "background" which cannot have its transparency edited. To change that, just doubleclick the background layer in the layer palette and click ok and it'll switch to a regular layer.* You can set what "transparent" looks like in the preferences window. The default is a neutral-gray-and-white checkerboard pattern.   "Sneftel is correct, if rather vulgar." --Flarelocke   Ok, I tried doubleclicking the layer and pressing ok, but now, how can I save the image this way that it has a 4th channel included?  In channels I still only see R, G and B.  And with what tool can I actually edit this transparency, since the regular brush is only creating colors...   EDIT: problem 2 solved; the erasor tool But how to save this 4th channel in it? [edited by - Boops on February 16, 2004 6:46:50 PM];  yeah, I had some problems with that too. But then I realized that I don''t need an alpha channel in my files to make my objects transparent since Direct3D surfaces have their own alpha channel. ;  I don't use Direct3D but SDL, and I want to be able to make the complete alpha channel myself, I want an object to have "0" in it's alpha channel where it's invisible, "255" in all parts where it's opaque, and something between that in semi transparant parts of the object, like the edges of the opaque part to make it less jaggy, and things like flames or ghosts that look cool when partly seethroughable.  These things appear to be easy to make in photoshop (the semitransparent parts at the edges of your object appear automaticly if you use a soft brush), but you can't save it in a fileformat useful to be read by my game I've done some experiments, for example, saving as tga and raw with alpha channels included, but it never uses the alpha channel of the layer as the alpha channel for that save (it just uses a totally black one).It's also possible to make an alpha channel in the "channels" tab, and that one will be saved, but it's very unintuitive to work with that one, because it isn't shown on your image while you work on it, you can't use the erasor tool to edit the alpha channel while looking at the colors too, and you don't see any grey white block patern behind it then.   [edited by - Boops on February 16, 2004 7:27:50 PM];  [edit: never mind, nothing to see here]   [edited by - Superpig on February 16, 2004 7:30:33 PM];quote:Original post by superpig   [edit: never mind, nothing to see here]   [edited by - Superpig on February 16, 2004 7:30:33 PM]You know you can delete posts right?Or was your post about something called *cough*aazak*cough*?   [edited by - Rob Loach on February 16, 2004 7:42:44 PM];quote:Original post by superpig  [edit: never mind, nothing to see here]   [edited by - Superpig on February 16, 2004 7:30:33 PM];  you need a format supporting 4 cahnnels.does photoshop support PNG? PNG is an extremely nice format. 