May I suggest you try to read the mini tutorial I posted in this forum a week or so ago ?
If it''s not helpful, I''ll gladly answer any question you might have left.




Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

I have a feeling you didnt select properly the parts to be shown.
Maybe you Ctrl+cliked on the background ?

let''s make one thing clear, in the tutorial, whatever you select will be the visible parts of your pictures, the rest will be transparent.
Since selection is not all or nothing, you can make shades of alpha. To see exactly how it looks, you can switch to the Quickmask mode instead of the classic selection tool.

Once you have selected what you want, you go to the Channels panel and create a new channel. By default, the button uses the current selection, so you end up with what you want, a proper alpha layer.

Then you need a software that can actually *display* the alpha layer properly.
You also need, in between, to have saved to a format that will support the alpha layer : PNG being one.


Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

you are welcome
Like I said, if you guys want more details, I can always give it a try...

Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

quote:Original post by Kylotan
I ctrl-shift-clicked on each channel. Each time it gave me a 'no pixels are more than 50% selected' message. You didn't really explain what ctrl-shift-clicking does, though, so I have no idea why it wasn't selecting what I wanted selecting. How would it know?

Ah yes, sorry
Ctrl+clicking on a *layer* in the Layers panel will select ALL pixels on this layer. It's that simple. If a pixel is transparent, i.e. its opacity is under 100%, it's selected as well, but if you check the Quickmask (that's at the bottom of the toolbar, you can switch the Marquee tool between normal and quickmask), you'll see those areas are indeed selected.(If you dont know what I am on about, you'll have to read up about the Marquee tool and the quickmask mode )

The error message you get is only a warning.
It explains you that it *has* selected pixels, but because of the way the Marquee tool works, it will look as if you didnt select anything. That's because the Marquee tool draws it's "marching ants" border around pixels which are 50% or more visible. Anything under is considered "outside".
If you want to see what you have actually selected, you should switch to the Quickmask mode.

Notice I emphasized the *layer* word 'cause I notice you talk about channels. We dont want to mess with the channels, we just want to create one. The Alpha channel, which doesnt exist by default.
To create it, we need to know which areas are going to be transparent and which will not.
To do this, we use the select tool.
The reason I talk about the Ctrl+click trick, is because this allow you to select all you need, without worrying about pixel opacity. In fact, it's exactly what you want : the Ctrl+click trick select all your pixels with their respetive opacity, which is what we want to get our transparent picture in the end.
When you use the quickmask mode, you get a preview of what your alpha layer will be (a Mask is saved as a Channel, btw).

hope this clears a few things up.

As for the IE glitch, well, I dont usually say that, but this is one of those times where it's appropriate to shout out loud "Microsoft Sucks". They know it, they dont give a damn about it. Go figure...


Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

[edited by - ahw on September 21, 2002 10:36:28 PM]