Alpha Maps

[hsa]

Probably not the right forum but need some good info quick. I have some really nice plant images I would like to use in post production for a current project and future projects. What I have are images on a clean white background and I have a matching image mask on a black background. How do I combine the 2 images to get the plant image on the black background so that the black background serves as an alpha channel. I would like to be to have just 1 file so that I could do a "load selection" and just the plant image is chosen..........

[danb4026]

You can bring the alpha map into photoshop as an alpha channel within the original image and then save as targa or png. Those save the alpha channels with the single image, and then in Max, you can put the image in your diffuse channel for color and then put it in the opacity channel with "alpha" only checked.

[William Alexander]

Dragging the Mask Image layer into the RGB color image file works if the Mask image is greyscale mode....

 

if it's RGB it won't work, but the mask layer obviously comes into PSD.

 

If the later is the case, make sure the Mask layer, dragged in, is on top or the only layer on. Go into the channels tab and copy any of the RGB channels. Rename the new channel to APLHA1 and save in file format that retians the ALPHA.