Watch 'Understanding and Using Alpha Channels
in Adobe Photoshop'. Size: 3.9 MB.*

I often find myself cast in the role of "resident Photoshop expert" on a development team. And as a hiring manager I learned to sort those who know Photoshop from those who think they know Photoshop.

Those experiences reveal that alpha channels are among the least-understood tools of digital imaging. I prepared this short PowerPoint for group presentations; I also use it to help teammates get up to speed on the basics before we dig into the really fun stuff.

My tasks included:

• Developing the concept
• Storyboarding and scripting
• Creating the original images used in the examples
• Creating and processing the screen grabs of the Photoshop interface.
• Building and animating the PowerPoint show

* The large 3.9 MB file size is due to the many iimage examples used in the show. Zipping it doesn't help, since the images are already JPEG'd by PowerPoint. Sorry for any inconvenience the long download may cause. :–)