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LAST EDITED ON Jan-09-03 AT 10:14 PM (EST)

I have a question. How do I not lose alpha channel when going from TGAtool to to Paint, and then back again. For both of my two repaints so far, I've asked someone else to fix the channel for because I've "lost" it. I want to learn how to prevent losing it, so I don't have ask anyone else. I also have Paint Shop Pro 7. Would this be better?Thanks,

Future Cumbres & Toltec or Durango & Silverton Engineer (I'm only 14!)Member of the NGVWTo see progress of the NG Route, go to: http://groups.msn.com/MSTSNarrowGauge/narrowgaugerouteformsts.msnw

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RE: Alpha Channels, darkfyre, Jan-10-03, 01:21 AM, (1) RE: Alpha Channels, Stooopid_person, Jan-10-03, 06:34 AM, (2) RE: Alpha Channels, ssw, Jan-10-03, 02:13 PM, (3) RE: Alpha Channels, baldwin, Jan-10-03, 04:08 PM, (4) RE: Alpha Channels, K36487, Jan-11-03, 11:46 AM, (5) RE: Alpha Channels, GrizzlyBear, Jan-12-03, 11:17 AM, (6) RE: Alpha Channels, Vulcan Foundry, Jan-12-03, 06:37 PM, (7) RE: Alpha Channels, rfoss, Jan-12-03, 09:18 PM, (8) RE: Alpha Channels, K36487, Jan-12-03, 09:59 PM, (9) RE: Alpha Channels, Vulcan Foundry, Jan-13-03, 05:54 AM, (10) RE: Alpha Channels, yellowdog, Jan-13-03, 12:42 PM, (11) RE: Alpha Channels, MartinW, Jan-13-03, 09:18 PM, (12) RE: Alpha Channels, yellowdog, Jan-14-03, 12:36 PM, (13)

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LAST EDITED ON Jan-10-03 AT 01:22 AM (EST)

Paint? You mean MSPaint?As far as I know, MSPaint has no support for Alpha Channels. It's great for editing bitmaps (I think that's what it was originally designed to do); but if you want to play around with them Alphas, use either Paint Shop Pro, or Adobe Photoshop.(A good way to 'lose' alphas in PSP, is to copy and paste from one .tga to another- be careful when/if you do that ..And .tga files are the only ones (I believe) that have alpha channels)


...Runnin' on Soda...

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You can never lose an alpha even if you edit in M$ Paint. You just don't realise that it is still they. The top right hand og TGATools2 displays the alpha channel.
And remember to export to ".ace(with alpha)"

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.BMP's don't support Alpha channels, ergo when you edit a .BMP in paint, you don't have alphas. When you change a .tga to .bmp in PSP, you lose the alpha's. It prompts you with a message "This file format does not support alpha channels, you will lose any alpha channels. Do you still wish to continue?"

Bradley Linda
Waco, Texas

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For Tgatools2 to keep track of the alpha channel of the BMP you are editing it must remain active, not be closed. You then reload after edit and export as Ace(Alpha).If you change window size or placement you can use Tgatools2 to create a new alpha channel from the new BMP and send that to your editor and deal with it in the same way as the ordinary BMP, except that you will be working in black and white and shades of grey to recreate the alpha channel. At the end you do exactly the same as before, reload after edit, export as Ace(alpha) mervyn@madasafish.com

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Thanks, I'll try these suggestions.

Future Cumbres & Toltec or Durango & Silverton Engineer (I'm only 14!)Member of the NGVWTo see progress of the NG Route, go to: http://groups.msn.com/MSTSNarrowGauge/narrowgaugerouteformsts.msnw

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Hi John
Make sure you're always working in tga format. Someone said bitmaps don't support alpha channels and that is correct. Also when you save your work, make sure you save all transparencies to only ONE alpha channel per tga. The tga format is a merged image and only supports one alpha channel. I would also recommend you get a copy of Paint Shop Pro if you can. I don't know if MS Paint supports alpha channel editing, but PSP does. you can even edit the degree of transparency or opaqueness in an alpha channel in PSP.Grizzly

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Now you've confused me. When you convert an ACE file to your image editor (PSP 7.04) it produces a bitmap. How then is the best way to covert the ACE file to a TGA file ? do you do it when it is in your image editor, or do you do it in TGA2 tool prior to conversion ?

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See if this clarifies things,Here is what you need to do in TGATool2.When you first open TGATOOL2 you need to select "Prefs" and in the drop down menu tell the program which image editor you will be using and it's location.Then load up your .ace file. After you have loaded your .ace file select "image" on the menu bar.From the drop down menu select "Send Alpha Channel to Editor". This will cause the alpha channel to be opened in the image editor that you specified.Edit the alpha channel image and then select "save" in your image editor. When you send the alpha channel to your editor TGATOOL2 creates an image with a file name that it will recognize automatically when you select "save". Do not use "save as". Note: The image editor you are using must be able to save directly to a .bmp file.I originally used Corel PhotoPaint and it would not work because I could not save as a .bmp.Your edited alpha channel image will be reunited with the other part of the image after you have saved it by returning to TGATOOL2 and on the "Image" drop down menu you select the "Reload After Edit" that appears under the "Send Alpha Channel to Editor" selection.Then "Export" your .ace file by selecting "ACE (Alpha)" in the drop down menu.I hope this is clear. If not please do not hesitate to email me and I will attempt to answer your questions.Good luck!!
Rick

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Thanks guys for clearing that up!

Future Cumbres & Toltec or Durango & Silverton Engineer (I'm only 14!)Member of the NGVWTo see progress of the NG Route, go to: http://groups.msn.com/MSTSNarrowGauge/narrowgaugerouteformsts.msnw

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Thanks for the explanation, works like a charm.

The measure of success is gauged by not how many times you've fallen but by how many times you've gotten back up

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I usually save the whole thing as a tga file for two reasons 1)It takes me several hours, sometimes spread over several days, to complete a reskin and 2) System crashes happen to the best of us. This does not take much more effort than what has been suggested above. Open TGATool2 and send both the image and the alpha channel to your photo editor. Now go to your editor and copy the alpha channel (it will have a weird name, but it will be the black and white/greyscale image). Select your image (also a weird name, but will look like a flat version of your rolling stock) and click on the tool to create a new channel (it's different for every program). Paste the alpha channel into the newly created channel of your image and save the whole thing as a tga file with a name that you will recognize. You CANNOT do this in MSPaint, but can with Paint Shop Pro or PhotoShop (or possibly others that I don't know about). What I usually do is make a copy of the original wag/eng folder, then rename the eng/wag, s, and sd files to match the paint I'm going to create (changing the data in these to match as well). Then I save my newly created tga file into that folder, usually with the same name as the ace file. If I get two different versions going, I save one with a _2 extension (i.e. sd402c_2.tga). Then when I get one I like, I keep it, convert it to the ace, delete the others, and rename my saved one removing any extensions.

Clayton

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You can just save a targa file directly from TgaTool2.Just load the Ace and then "save" from the File menu. This will save a Targa (with the Alpha) which you can reload at a later date if required (like if you mess up the ace file or get a crash).Always a good idea to make a targa copy even if you are working direct from Ace-in to Ace-out in TgaTool2. Things can go wrong (and always at the worst moments...)

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Sometimes I make changes to the alpha independent of the image file, so I do it "the long way" so I can have both of them separate if needed.

Clayton

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