Hi guys edited this post due to location my problem (my original post was way off the mark), basically when I load an image using IMg_Load libery I then have to convert this image to 2^n dimensions for OpenGL blending. The way I go about this is to create a new surface with the same color format as the original one then simply blit the old onto the new. This causes a side effect, for some reason alpha is spread across the whole of the image making the background image show through. Any Ideas on how to prevent this, I have tried calling SDL_SetAlpha but nothing changed.