You're doing fine, Dawn, but your answer was a little incomplete.  Adobe Photoshop
saves the first alpha channel data into PNG format as well, and I beleive Paint Shop
Pro does, but I haven't used it.

Another thing to note is that the first that you try it you might find the background
shows up, but part you want to keep is hollow, and to fix it you need to reverse the
alpha channel of the image.

Josh

Dawn McKnight wrote:

> Mitch Klein wrote:
> >
> > Thanks for the reply, Pete. That's IS what I meant. So, if the alpha map is
> > embedded in the image, using the image as a map automatically adds the
> > alpha?
>
> Since I've been playing with this the last few days, I'll go ahead and
> answer; please keep in mind that I'm a novice, too, so I may not give a
> complete answer.
>
> Yes, that's correct.  If you use a PNG with an alpha channel (to date,
> the only program I've found that fully supports alpha channels for PNG
> is 'The Gimp' (http://www.gimp.org)), POV will automatically use the
> alpha channel for transparency mapping.
>
> The nice thing about this is that PNG supports separate transparency
> values for every color in an index, so you can get some interesting effects.
>
> --
> Dawn McKnight      | "Who cares what the hipbone's connected to? I'm in Neurology!"
> McK### [at] maccom   |                                    -- Justine Devlin, M.D.

--
Josh English -- Lexiphanic Lethomaniac
eng### [at] spiritonecom
The POV-Ray Cyclopedia http://www.spiritone.com/~english/cyclopedia/

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