RE: [GD-Windows] Image formats (was [Algorithms] Scrolling starfield)

[Jon W. <hp...@mi...>]

> Ideally I'd like something that
>
> Supports an alpha channel
> Supports 32, 24, & 8 bit images
>
> I'm not sure if anything out there actually fits the bill for this though.
> I've thought about writing a plugin for Photoshop to supported saving to
> targa's that fit the above, but it looks like a whole lot of pain.

PhotoShop 6 saves .tga files like this just fine. Make sure you have an
actual
Alpah1 channel by creating a new channel in the Channels window, and you're
golden. I use 'em all the time for quick experiments. (To load a tga, read
18 bytes, extract size, read 4*width*height bytes and you're done :-) It
also
seems to load them back in just fine. Haven't tried 7 yet -- did they make
it suck?

For production use, the deliverable size is really important, so we save the
color channel as a JPEG, and the alpha as grayscale JPEG (for translucency)
or 1-bit PNG (for cut-out). Our material system can mix/match and interlace
these as appropriate on asset load. Artists understand it, because Max has
a separate Opacity channel from Diffuse Color channel.

Cheers,

			/ h+