Simple Question About Alphas in Paint.Net

[Darkrder]

Hi There,

I am not a Paint.Net user, but I am mediating an argument between two Paint.net users. One claims that by itself, without external plugins, Paint.net has no alpha support. The other says it does. Can anyone more familiar with the program itself enlighten me on this subject a bit?

 

Thanks

Edited January 29, 2013 by Darkrder

[pdnnoob]

Paint.net natively supports alpha.

The one that says it doesn't may have been saving as .jpg images which do not contain alpha data.

[Darkrder]

Okay, I've opened the program, I'm not seeing any options for editing alpha channels. So a transparent alpha layer is natively supported from what I see. What about the ability to edit alpha channels?

 

[EDIT] The images used in this case were dds files

Edited January 29, 2013 by Darkrder

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Each pixel carries its own 8-bit alpha channel. You change the alpha value by adding or removing values like the RGB information.

An RGBA color can be set in the Colors Window. Many of the Tools use the RGB+A values to replace or modify the original pixel values.

Try dragging out a transparent gradient (Gradient Tool + Transparent mode from the Tool Bar) to see how the alpha value can be changed.

[Darkrder]

Thank you for the input folks

[Rick Brewster]

I think they're just collating their terms. They're not wrong, they're just using the wrong words.

 

As mentioned above, Paint.NET totally has alpha channel support. I can tell you this in full confidence because it has wrinkled my brain on many occasions in order to ensure everything works correctly with respect to it (especially in 4.0). The alpha channel is a first class citizen in Paint.NET.

 

It does not have built-in support for alpha masks. You can think of an alpha "mask" as an extra alpha channel per layer which modulates the regular alpha value, but only for that layer. It'd be like having ... hmm, we'll call it RGBAA, whereas normally you only get RGBA. And you'd be able to edit it directly.