Alpha Channel Tutorial

[TimCollier]

[Jeff Chandler]

Thank You Tim. YOu must have picked up the fear in my voice last night when you were telling me to change the car files to some G5 classified deal

[Jeff Chandler]

I don't have an option within Photoshop to save as a DXT5 or alpha channel. I saw the DDS converter tool has both options but it doesn't ask me which channel to use so I assume there is only 1 channel?

[HenryHudson]

Thanks a TON! Tim!

Phew, at least I can use this to spruce up the #74 PetroMALT Dodge before tonight's paint deadline...

[HenryHudson]

Jeff,

When you select Save As in PS, is there an option in the dropdown to save a DDS - it looks like " D3D/DDS (*.DDS) ". If not you need to get the nVidia PS DDS plugin at HERE and load it to your PS install.

If you do have the DDS option, when you pick that option it should bring up another dialog box, that has a dropdown for you to select the type of DDS file you want to save. They start with DXT1 with no alpha and go to 32.32.32.32f. For rFactor and ASR we're only concerned with DXT1 no alpha and DXT5.

[Jeff Chandler]

Thanks Henry.

[Jeff Chandler]

When I try and save as a .DDS in Photoshop it gives me this message: Too Many Channels To Export(5)
Is this because I have too many layers? Do I need to merge them all down to 5? Please bear with me, I want to learn this stuff

[johnfatboy]

YEA SAVE BEFORE YOU MERGE SO YOU CAN GO BACK IF YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH THE LAYERS

[HenryHudson]

Jeff,

As John said, when you reach the point that you want to save your paint as a DDS, save your PSD, go to layers and select flatten image, then save as a DDS. To continue work on your PSD after that, just UNDO (CNTRL+Z) and you'll have all your layers back...

If you ever watch PS as it saves a JPG, you'll see that if actually does the same thing...

[Jeff Chandler]

OK, I got it going, one question though, I'm saving it as DXT5 argb 8bpp interpolated alpha
Is this correct?