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Document Title: Alpha Channels and Color

If you're importing the layered file into Lyric then the alpha channel is irrelevant...Lyric will use the transparency information from each layer to make that layer in Lyric keyable.

As for channels, you'll always leave your RGB, Red, Green & Blue channels present. If you've got a file in Photoshop and you're saving it out as a Targa file, for example, then the Alpha channel becomes critical. Merge the layers you want in Photoshop, right-click the thumbnail in the layers palette and choose 'select layer transparency'. Then select the 'channels' tab (right next to the layers palette) and press the 'save selection as channel' button at the bottom of that palette (the rectangle with a circle in it). You've now created an alpha channel.

There's a few important things of which you need to be aware with regards to Photoshop and alpha channels (especially when creating content for video):

• If you don't give Photoshop a background (ie you leave the checkerboard pattern 'visible' in your image) Photoshop will flatten that image over white. The result will be a thin white line around your keyable graphic (the areas where anti-aliasing occur) when you import it into Lyric. This looks bad and annoying people like me will mock you when they see your graphics on air.
• Giving your graphic a black background is better than nothing (ie white), but it won't be perfect. A little harder for folks to ridicule, but not impossible. The real problem comes when you've got graphics with varying transparencies (ie gradients or soft edges). This is where both the white or black backgrounds produce horrendously ugly & inaccurate graphics in the video world.
• There's a trick to creating graphics like this for video. Try the following exercise:
• Create a new image in PS (Cntl-N), make it 700 pixels wide & 100 pixels high at 72dpi. Make your foreground color blue. Select the gradient tool (press 'G'). Make sure the gradient settings in the toolbar are for a gradient that goes from the foreground to transparent. Make the gradient go in a straight line from left to right (hold the shift button down to constrain it to a straight line). Select the layer transparency and save the alpha channel as per above. Save it as a TGA file and call it BlueRampWrong01.tga.
• Now create a new layer in your image (below your gradient layer)and fill it completely with black (make your background color black, then CNTL-Backspace to fill the layer). Now save this as a TGA file and call it BlueRampWrong02.tga.
• Now select your blue ramp layer and fill the layer entirely with blue (your foreground color...ALT-Backspace will do this assuming you've still got the blue selected as your foreground). Save this as BlueRampCorrect.tga.
• Import all three files into your Lyric canvas in the order in which you created them, positioned top to bottom. XFer them to your output and look at them keyed over video in your switcher. Note that BlueRampWrong01.tga ramps from solid blue to sort of a grayish blue to transparent (a result of having the white Photoshop-flattened background in the file). BlueRampWrong02.tga ramps from solid blue to kind of black-ish blue to transparent. BlueRampCorrect.tga ramps perfectly from solid blue to transparent with no change in the color from one end to the other.