Question about Opacity

[Wulf_Ratbane]

Hey folks, I was tooting around with the UI a bit this weekend, so I figured the easiest thing to do would be just to turn down the opacity on some of the bigger menus.

However, I found that after reducing the opacity (in Photoshop) to 50%, instead of being more transparent, the UI turned almost pure white.

Any advice?

EDIT: Should I perhaps be using black as a transparency color?

[sheldie]

Any advice?

EDIT: Should I perhaps be using black as a transparency color?

I use Gimp and there is an option there to turn any background colour off entirely, so when you reduce the opacity, you can actually see through it.

For example:

The green bits are at 40% and the purple bits are at 60%

[Wulf_Ratbane]

Hmm... Taking another look at my files, I don't think that the transparency was preserved.

I'm guessing there's something about the TGA format I don't know.

EDIT: The culprit?

This should be it for Photoshop. I do use Photoshop 7.0 and CS2 (9.0), and I noticed that in CS2, the Targa format DOES NOT save properly, it dumps the transparency setting even with 32bit. So needless to say that not all versions of Photoshop work the same.

[Tous]

I had a friend of mine that is a graphic artist tell me that tga files do not support transparencies. Don't know how true that is for certain though cause there seems to be some kind of transparency going on.
It may be that they will support opacity but not transparency. Not sure what the diffrence is.

[ChAiNz.2da]

Hmm... Taking another look at my files, I don't think that the transparency was preserved.

I'm guessing there's something about the TGA format I don't know.

EDIT: The culprit?

Add an alpha channel manually to .tga files (to preserve transparencies), then save as 32bit. Otherwise .tga defaults to 24bit

[Wulf_Ratbane]

Thanks guys.

I have it (mostly) figured out in Photoshop, I think.

I still don't have a clear idea of how the alpha channel interfaces with existing pixels.

If you look at the existing alpha channel for the Focus Orb, for example, you'll see they've clipped around the item itself, so that all of the black pixels around the graphic are wholly transparent, and the Orb is wholly opaque.

I'm really looking for the best and cleanest way to turn the UI 50% transparent.

[Cairenn]

What he (ChAiNz.2da) said. .tga files most certainly do support transparency (it's the standard format for in-game images), you just have to remember to save your alpha channel. 32 bits = rgb + transparency = 8 red, 8 green, 8 blue + 8 alpha (transparency). If you don't save your alpha (transparency) channel, it saves as 24 bit (rgb only).