Photoshop CS3 Alpha problems in Unity

Unity Engine
1

When I use a PSD instead of a PNG for gfx with Alpha channels, I’m getting a white matte background instead of black. This makes my shadows glow instead of darken the background.
You can see the offending GUI texture below (its the only white one).

Any help is appreciated. Thx

58335--2127--$picture_4_377.png

2

I use Save For Web to avoid this. Your other option is to not have transparency in the image (but a solid black color), and a separate channel for your transparency info. This totally blows

3

That does suck - is there any way Unity can fix this on import?

4

I finally found a thread that covers this problem I’ve been having. PNG’s definitely work but has anyone found a fix for this in PSD’s? Which means I can keep a layered file for editing. Is this a CS3 problem only? I’ve not tested in CS2 or earlier versions.

Thnxs

5

We have a worse problem with CS3 right now: some PSDs with separate alpha channels (instead of knocked-out alpha in the layer) won’t display the alpha channel.

Ones that work:

  1. Older PSDs made with CS2 and unchanged in CS3.
  2. PSDs made from scratch with CS3.

These show up in both Unity and the Leopard Finder preview with their proper alpha.

Ones that don’t work:

  1. Old PSDs modified in CS3 and resaved.

These don’t show the alpha in either Unity or the Finder.

This suggests there’s something broken about the way CS3 saves alpha channel info somehow. I’ve tried changing the compatibility settings in CS3, but then the main image doesn’t show up.

Any similar experiences, workarounds, etc., would be most welcome!

6

In PS, I use .tiff format. That I can tell, it has all the joy of .psd (layers, transparency, vector layers / layer effects), but with fewer headaches.

For use in Unity with alphas, I find these settings work best (less you might get errors):

Seems counter-intuitive to not check Save Transparency when using Alpha, but it otherwise works and doesn’t give errors in Unity (checking it does).

7

Casemon, thanks for the TIFF tip – we’ve seen textures in that format. I hadn’t been aware that TIFF could keep all of the image effects and layers that PSD does, so I’ll have to check into that.

8

Casemon, do you use CS3?

Great info btw…

Cheers

9

Yeah using CS3; upgrade from Photoshop7.

Honestly I hope it’s the last version of PS that I buy… PS is getting too bloated and the value seems to drop with each version IMO.

I’m hoping alternatives like Pixelmator mature their .tiff support so I won’t have to be chained to the Adobe slave wagon any longer!