PS CS 2 anyone?

[Canadian_Bacon]

hey i need some help with photoshop CS 2 i think its also known as PS v9?, anyways.

whenever i make an alpha channel for... actually anything in this program, i can never use Filters>Render>Lighting Effects...

the only time it seems to work is when i save my drawing as a jpeg and than open that up and add an alpha channel to it and so on.

is there an easier way to this, in tutorials i have read it always shows an older version where you right click on the layer and you choose render image which seems to get it to work, PS v9 doesn't have this function.

[DieHard SCWS]

This would be a question for the general section.


But there is a simple answer.

If you want to be able to use all the filter, you have to make sure the picture is set to: Image ---> Mode ---> RGB.

If its set to CMYK or Greyscale or any other mode, than Photoshop will be unable to use all the filters.

So the answer is plain and simple: always work in the RGB environement.



The same goes for Alpha channels, Alpha channels only work in a 256 greyscale palet, so not all filters will work.

Create a layer that contains the stuff for the Alpha channel, work on it till you have the correct result, than copy and paste the result into an Alpha channel.



For DDS support in Unreal goes that the Alpha channel needs to be a 1 bit channel (meaning only black and white and no greyscales), This problem will hopefully solved in the near future..........

BMP or PCX does not support Alpha channels, so for normal textures theres little use, but i asume you wanted to use the Alpha channel for Bumpmapping the other layers.
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[Canadian_Bacon]

i've been working on it in RGB, thats why i'm having so much trouble. What i'm doing is selecting the trasparency or shape and making an alpha channel and adding a gaussian blur to it. After that i'd go to render and lighting effects would be hidden/inactive., so are you saying the alpha channel has to be 256 colours for it to work? wouldn't it do that by default?

and like i said the only way to get it to work is to convert it to jpeg... weird

[DieHard SCWS]

No, the Alpha Channel ONLY HAS greyscale and does not know colors, the greyscale contains only 256 greyscale ''colors'' which is not acceptable for all filters.




You should simply:

- copy your shape to a new layer
- blur that layer
- add the lightning effect

Than:

- Select all in that layer (CRTL A)
- paste it into a new Alpha channel

That should give the result your looking for........




Even if your picture and all layers are in 24 bit RGB, any Alpha channel in that file will still only contain 256 shades of grey !


Often i even copy a colored layer to an Alpha channel to change it to a greyscale layer

Copy layer --> paste into an Alpha channel, copy the Alpha channel ---> paste it into a new layer. You can hit the desaturate button, but sometimes i am too lazy to do so
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[Canadian_Bacon]

ok thanks