No it doesn't. Photoshop is unbeatable for this type of work. Sorry to but in, but people shouldn't be fed misinformation so readily.stardust wrote:Photoshop is known to have an issue with handling transparency/alpha correctly for tga format.
There's one thing that can happen which may throw a few people off track, but it's not inherant to photoshop. When sizing down animations which include an alpha channel, occasionally you may find the need to put an inner black stroke on your alpha channel mask layer if an imperfection appears around the mask edge.
So does photoshop. You just need to know how to use the software.My recommendation would be GIMP therefore, since it produces the TGA 32bit with alpha just as SDK wants it.
I won't say what I think of Gimp. Lets just say I've spent considerable time with Gimp & won't be wasting any more time with it.
Shit I can't help myself, Gimp is not a good piece of software & doesn't come close to meeting the expectations of anyone who knows design software. For someone who doesn't know design software & doesn't care about the workflow of the application they're gonna be using intensively or not as the case may be, it might just suffice.
So do professional 3d apps like Max, Maya & Lightwave, so nothing new there.Also Blender renders animation as single tga pictures in the correct format.
In fact, they can also include an alpha channel transparency in the animation renders which means that those who don't know how to use their 2d application to mask & create an alpha channel, don't need to worry about it at all.
As sharc briefly explained in the gui elements thread, essentially you should only be using your 2d tool for croping & resizing your 3d rendered animation frames. The exception to that is elements with oddly shaped moving shadows.
Obviously level & colour adjustments are possible at the 2d app stage if needed (which they often are if you're colour-matching a control to the surface it sits on).
Again, sorry for butting in, but you can't be telling people all over the world on a public forum that Photoshop doesn't work properly with alpha channels (which is rediculous) & that Gimp is a better choice when in fact gimp is crap & only a better choice if you don't know what you're talking about OR you're not doing very much with it, so don't care.
Sorry, I can't write this in German for our new forum member stuff3d, but feel free to translate it for him, cursing 'n' all.