Problems with Photoshop Alpha Channels

Hi all
Got a job where I want to use alpha channels to cut-out some images in Photoshop and then put them into an ID frame with a black background. Want to use alpha channels rather than a clipping path as I need the edges to be feathered (have applied 2 pixels of feathering to the selection in Photoshop before saving it).
When I do this and drop it into Quark it looks good but when these images are dropped into ID and then the alpha channel is turned on, with the default Threshold and Tolerance settings, it doesn't look good. It looks like a rough approximation of my alpha channel, all the fiddly bits and bezier curves in the selection have been smoothed out and the feathering has gone. Playing with the settings doesn't really seems to help either. If I turn on the alpha channel in the import options when importing then it comes in as expected but I have quite a few images already in the document that I need to turn on the alpha channels for.
Both PS and ID are CS3. I've tried saving the images both as PSD and tif. Anyone got any ideas? Seems odd that when I import an image with the channel on I can't go to the clipping options and tweak the settings.
thanks,
Iain

Thanks for your reply Bob. I've confused things with my terminology I think. We're drawing a path round the image, using bezier curves where appropriate, making that work path a selection (feathering the edge in the process) and then saving the selection (as an alpha channel) and then using the feathered alpha channel in Quark/ID to knock-out the background. Not keen on using a PSD with a transparent background at the moment as these are just test files while we show the customer what it will look like if we do cut-outs. We are making a couple of different alpha channels per image, with different settings, which would mean multiple files if we used your method I think. Maybe once we get the approval from the customer we could use PSDs as you describe but I was just wondering why the options for affecting alpha channels after importing the image aren't working as I expected.
Iain

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