Placing the Alpha channel on to a Texture

The texture where you require to place an alpha opening
requires to be painted in black so you know where the opening will be placed.

Using the Magic wand, click inside the black area to create the mask.
This will place the 'mask' (little ants) on the texture you are working with.
This is the alpha mask position, (in case of multiple areas, use the shift and wand together).
Now invert the mask; Selections/Invert. This adjusts the polarity the right way around

Saving the alpha

Selections/Save to Alpha. This embodies the mask into the texture.
Now to make it a fixed file by going to File/Save as... and give it a name.
Check the boxes are set to Options - '24 bits' and 'uncompressed'.
Save as type. - 'Truevision Tga'.
Press 'Save', and that is it. Done! Ready to use.

Swapping an alpha channel to another Texture.

Before you can do this you have to have the same size for both Textures.
Load the tga file that you wish to copy the tga mask.
Check the size, 128 - 256 - 512.
If it is the same size as the one to be transferred to, fine carry on.
If not resize to the same size. (I will say 256 for the exercise)
So now both are compatible in size @ 256 pix sq.
You have loaded the tga file you wish to copy the alpha mask, now find
Selections/Load from Alpha Channel

Up comes the panel load from Alpha - press OK.
This will place the 'mask' (little ants) on the texture you are working with.
This is the alpha mask.

Now Selections again, and this time Save to disc
The mask panel will pop up, and you can save as whatever name you wish, say 'Transfer-1'
You now have copied the mask ready to use again, so now clear the deck to start again.

Load the texture you wish to format with the tga mask.
(Remember you checked it to make the sizes the same)

Selections/Load from Disk

Find your mask from the list, click Open. This will place the mask on to the Texture. Now do the Saving the Alpha as explained above.

Note!
No responsibility can be accepted for problems arising from the use of this article and the user does so at their own risk.

Copyright© 2007 Frank Thomas