   Question about  Photoshop and Alpha Transparency
  Greetings All,I'm having a bit of an issue and I thought maybe somone would have a quick answer.In photoshop I am trying to create a transparent area in an image (which is eventually saved to a .png file)I am able to use the eraser tool to create the alpha transparent areas, except there is one side effect which is causing me trouble.while indeed it is setting the alpha values properly, photoshop sets the RGB values of 100% transparent areas to pure white.in normal circumstances this is fine, however this image is used in a program which does a lot of stretching/shrinking, this causes the alpha channel to filter and 'bleed' out some of that white color.so what i would like, is to modify the alpha channel (and have it show translucent in photoshop (checker background)) but not to have photoshop clear the 100% transparent pixels to white, instead leave them alone (a nice darker color that will work better when filtering occurs).Any ideas?   
  Go to the channels palette, add an alpha channel and paint in there. Anything black will saved as transparent.   ;  Have you tried to apply a layer mask instead? That way the RGB should be unchanged. To change the transparency, you 'paint' on the layer mask with black grey and white.   ;  Using a layer mask worked.Sucks I cant use the eraser tool directly =/but no big deal, thanks again =D   ;  Double-click the flat "background" layer and give it a name...any name, this promotes it to a proper layer, when you erase now you will leave transparency ;)   