Making a alpha channel in photoshop elements 5.0

hello so I am making this spray or icon I guess you could call it for counter strike source which is a game I play. But I want to make it so that it has no background and apparently I have been told that I need to make an alpha channel so that I can do that. But every tutorial I can find on the internet is for previous versions which have a channel tab in the layers tab.
How ever elements 5.0 does not that have. Can someone help me with this it is driving me crazy lol I have tried just saving it as a targa file in 32 bit nut it still had that white background :(

Colin 1 and 2, thanks. I enjoy your web sites and learn alot from them and your comments here. I am using selections here mostly as cutouts, I'm not sure of my terminology in this forum yet. I never used photo shop and would not know an alpha channel if it bite me. I have spent much time making a selection/cutout and want to save it. I thought save selection would send it some place like copy command saves in note pad. I now believe I have to save the image with it's multiple layers if I want to use that selection/cutout in another image.
Only if you want to do the same selection into other images at other times do you need to save the selection. Then just drag and drop it across. Colin#2

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David,
I just had a breakthrough with this. The original file was CMYK. Creating an alpha channel and importing it into FCP gave me the problem. Converting it to RGB first, then creating the alpha channel and importing it, solved the problem. Doh!
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Bill,
I hope you ordered 32 GB or more on that new computer After Effects 5.5 takes up as much as it can.
The Roto Brush tool is really a timesaver over ordinary Rotoscoping. Although, my problem now is: when I try to send a 1 min. And 11 second video from Adobe Premier Pro 5.5 two Adobe Media encoder 5.5, the process hangs in wait state in the Media Encoder. I have filed a request for help on the Media Encoder forum.
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Hi,
Recently i wish to Make a Picture's Background to transperence.
I try to use a ODD color (green screen's GREEN) as background color so that it'll be easy to delete the background when apply the instant alpha function...but i relize that it doesn't really make sense at all...Most of the parts doesn't process well...
Question:~
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+ Do any other useful way to solve the issue above?
Thanks!!

Here's what I do:
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6 - Save and you're done.
OT

Alpha Channels in Photoshop CS4 not working

I'm not an expert at using alpha channels, but I was trying to clip someone from a background. I followed the directions according to a tutorial I found (choose which color channel looks best, then Alt-click on New Channel). My alpha channel always looks black. Anyone else have this problem?

I thought there was a way, using the channels palette, to create an
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Hi
I am new to this forum and have only just purchased Photoshop Elements 11. I was interested in making single fold greeting cards using my own photos. I wanted to make the image fill the front page and not use the templates provided, is this possible?
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You might also want to tell us what you are trying to do. There may be another way. Alpha channels are really quite a specialized aspect of digital imaging that most users are quite unconcerned about.

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Also, in the Node View window, when I put the cursor over the needle and hit the "A" key, the thumbnail clearly shows the alpha channel, a white area in the shape of a needle and black everywhere else.
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Thanks much, Zebulun. Toggling premultiply worked. In a side experiment, I later saved my Photoshop image as a .psd file rather than .tiff and when I brought that one into Shake, it came in with its clipping-path/mask working without using premultiply in the Over node. Not sure what the difference would be in how Shake treats the two file formats, but they both achieve the same end result.

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Hi!
I'm stuck with something that I think might have a simple solution:
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Okay I will answer my own question:
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So as I said, I am making a simple scene in cinema 4D with just some text. I am going to bring it in to photoshop so I will have 3D text in photoshop.
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I'm using FCP 5 with DVDSP. My FCP projects consist of quicktime movies that are using the Animation compressor (for lossless quality), and the movies contain alpha channels (thus they were rendered at Millions + colors to preserve the alphas).
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Brian,.
Quad-core 2.5 G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6) 30" Apple Cinema Display
Quad-core 2.5 G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3) 30" Apple Cinema Display

Thanks for the suggestions. I have not yet tried laying a solid black video track underneath to see what it does, but it seems like a good idea and I'll try it out to see what happens when I get back home.
I'll try to explain what I mean by the image looking wrong.
I'm picking up where another left off, so I'm not sure of how he cut the quicktime movie together; all I know is that they used alpha channels in Photoshop and After Effects to make the image looks the way they want it. This is a drawn character laid on a white background with a black frame around the entire image. It looks the way he wants it to in the quicktime movie, and this quicktime movie is 720x480, animation millions colors +, 24fps.
This movie, along with others of the like, need to be cut together in FCP and then put on a DVD with DVDSP. When I export it and it looks "wrong", what's happening is there is a black block behind the drawn character. The guy that made the movies in AE says that, that is what it looks like when the alpha channel is not working correctly.
To test things, I've changed the quicktime compression settings in the sequence settings. If I set it to anything that is not animation, I get that black block in the viewer. (Note though, that if I set it to animation, millions + or not +, it shows the alpha correctly both ways).
In FCP's user manual it says that if you're passing your movie on to a DVD, to use a high or lossless compression to keep the quality up, like animation or PhotoJPEG. For this reason, I haven't wanted to go to DV - especially with this type of image (graphic drawn shapes), it's easy to see a quality difference.
It really seems like there is a lot of voodoo involved with compression settings. As for now the best "fool-proof" solution I've found is to re-render the movie in After Effects at millions (not+) so that it won't contain the alpha channel info, and FCP seems to like that a lot more.
I just wish I could get FCP to work with the movies as they were because I'm having to re-edit everything to work with these new movies now.
Thanks again for the tips and insight.
Quad-core 2.5 G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3) 30" Apple Cinema Display
Quad-core 2.5 G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3) 30" Apple Cinema Display

Photoshop Elements 4 Slide Show Tips

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Making a slide show in Elements 4 is simple and reasonably intuitive, especially if you are familiar with the Organizer. If youre not familiar with the Organizer, making a slide show gives you a good opportunity to become so. Its worth it.
As with any computer task, theres a learning curve associated with making slide shows, but its a worthwhile curve to climb up. Once youre familiar with making slide shows, making new ones is easy, fun, and very productive.
Elements 4 lets you output slide shows as PDF files (.PDF) or Movie Files (.WMV).
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You can view the WMV files on Windows Media Player or whatever multimedia software you use. If you have a DVD burner and simple DVD creation software, you can easily convert the WMV files to DVDs.
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WMV can be played on any computer with Windows Media Player or similar. Sound track can be unstable. CAN see pan & zoom, which are excellent slide show features (try them). Can't copy images locally.
You can make a
DVD from WMV files. It has stable audio and shows pan & zoom, but resolution is lower than the other two.
In a few hours (from 12/5/05 AM), you can download PDF versions of my slide shows from the reunions page at www.ussrankin.org. The BANQUET one has the most features.

Louis,
I hope you are happy with the decision to go with the Sony package. I really like the flexibility of both programs.
I'd be happy to answer some questions. I changed my Adobe forum profile so that you can see my e-mail address. I'll leave it on there for a day or so.
Have you tried the Sony website and forums?
http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums/default.asp
I have always found them helpful, much like this one.
I have to admit that my skills on DVD Architect Studio 3 are not as good as they are on Movie Studio 6. I cut my teeth on the first full blown version of DVD Architect [1.0]. DVD Architect Studio has so many more features and flexibility, it is amazing. The only bad thing about DVD Architect Studio that I can see is that it won't encode the audio in Dolby AC-3 format, which is the preferred format. If you use the audio defaults in the program, however, you will be fine unless you are trying to cram more than 60 minutes worth of stuff onto the DVD. Personally, I think that is bad practice anyway, because who wants to watch an hour of your slideshows!

Making a alpha channel in photoshop elements 5.0

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