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    • In Need of one good long explaination of .png Graphics

       Coldstone Web Board
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      I'm in need of one good long explaination of .png graphics;
      what is an alpha channel?
      how to construct a png graphic utilizing alpha channels for transparencies etc.

      Glue bubble this looks like a job for u

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      As to "what are alpha masks/channels?", see the following background reference about computer graphics color in general and alpha in particular:
      (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum48/HTML/000518.html#Glenn05-31-200108:14PM")http://www.ambrosias...-31-200108:14PM(/url)

      The specific portion of the above which refers to alpha masks:

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      Alpha channels come into play with 32-bit images. A 32-bit image is actually a 24-bit image with one more 8-bit channel: the "alpha" channel. While the Red, Green, and Blue channels describe the color of each pixel, the Alpha channel describes its transparency. 8 bits gives 256 levels of transparency, from fully opaque to fully transparent, with a full range of translucency in between. (By contrast, the old graphics format in Coldstone (which you can still use, if you wish) only has 1-bit transparency: either a pixel is completely transparent, or it's completely opaque.)

      By using alpha masking, an image can have partially translucent edges which allow it to smoothly blend with its background. It also allows "see-through" windows which tint objects behind them, shadows which darken things underneath them, "light sources" which brighten the area around them, fog to obscure the view, translucent spell effects, ghostly enemies, and many other very cool things.

      PNG is just a file format which (unlike PICT, GIF, and JPG) has built-in support for alpha channels.

      Creating a PNG with an alpha channel is probably best done in PhotoShop, though GraphicConverter might also be able to handle it. I've used PhotoShop for this purpose several times, but I haven't managed to get it down to a simple system yet, so I'll let someone else explain that.

      Hope this helped.

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      Macromedia Fireworks is an excellent program as well that is based around the PNG format.

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