Using Fireworks for textures. Need assistance

[Richard Lacombe]

Hey there everyone.  I've been using Fireworks for over a decade so I consider myself experienced. However, when I create textures for SL, there "appears" to be an alpha issue. I export a flattened PNG, 512 x 512, 72 dpi, yet when I apply it to an object, there seems to be a transparency despite my transpaency setting at zero.The conflict occurs when there are other objects nearby but they do not meet. . The same goes for exported images with alpha (unflattened) . I'm sure others have experienced this. I was curious to explore the options to resolve this annoyance

[Ceera Murakami]

"Flattening" a PNG image doesn't remove alpha. You need to explicitly save it as a 24-bit image instead of 32 bit to remove the alpha channel information. This is s very common problem with trying to use PNG textures in SL. With some applications there is a "Save for web" option that will strip out the alpha information and make the texture be 24-bit.

As a texture artist, I find it much safer to change the image to tga format, which forces an explicit choice or 24 bit or 32 bit when you save the converted image. Then you never accidentally import what you intended to be a non-alpha texture that has alpha properties.

[Richard Lacombe]

Thats an excellent response and I'm with you all the way, however, my version of Fireworks, CS3,  does not have TGA in the save-as list.  My Photoshop does, but it is not my preferred tool.  Is TIFF 24 usefull? If not, Ill have to bounce the image from Fireworks to Photoshop and save it as TGA. Thanks Ceera, you have been very helpful.

[Ceera Murakami]

If you save it as TIFF 24 and then save that back to png, that should remove the alpha channel.

Also, some apps call TGA the "Targa" format. That may be how Fireworks does it. Haven't used Fireworks myself in so many years I'm not even sure if I have it installed any more on my Mac system. (Am not on that system right now, so I can't look.) I'm fairly sure Fireworks does have that "Save for Web" option though. It should be in the same menu as Save and Save As, but as another choice in that menu. Might also be called "Export"? Tomorrow, when I am more awake, I'll try to check my Mac and see if I have Fireworks any more. If I do, I'll see if I can give you more explicit advice.

Oh, and just as a laugh, it's been so long since I used that Fireworks graphics program, that when I read your post, I didn't even think of that as referring to an application. I was thinking you were designing SL Pyrotechnics, and was wondering in the back of my mind why you would want non-alpha textures for the particles in them!

[Chosen Few]

Because Fireworks is web graphics program, it'll never have a save to TGA option.  TGA isn't a format used on web pages. 

If Fireworks is going to continue to be your tool of choice, then the easist strategy to employ will be to save to BMP when you don't want transparency, and save to PNG when you do.  Of course, it's certainly possible in Fireworks to save PNG's that don't containt transparency information, but the margin for error is great.  It's impossible to screw it up when you're saving to BMP, since BMP doesn't support transparency in the first place. (Well, actually it does, but not with Fireworks' implementation of it.)  Just remember to use BMP 24.  BMP 8 won't work for SL.

That said, I'd strongly encourage you to switch to Photoshop, if texturing is going to be a field you want to excel at.  Fireworks just doesn't have many of the basic tools that texture artists rely on.  Fireworks is a great "one-trick pony" specialty program, for the professional web designer.  But because it's so singularly geared towards web graphics, doing anything else with it becomes much more complicated than it really should be, and there are quite a few things it just plain cannot do at all.

[Richard Lacombe]

The whole shibang is about avoiding the external conversions.  I'll import them to PS and save as TGA there.  To think.. I used have a Canon printer driver disk that installed TGA write shell commands years ago.  

[Richard Lacombe]

Hmmm....   you got straight to the point.  The web isn't made up of TGA files. Clearly, I wasn't thinking!  Time to brush up on Photoshop and take this to the next level.    I was accustomed to the simplicity of Fireworks but Fireworks is not a paint tool for the most part.  I appreciate your input Chosen Few!