You might also try using opacity with layers. It seems to remove some of the transparency artifacts, especially with partial transparency. With what you desrcibe as your goal, I have had great success using a two layer shader. The bottom layer is all transparent (color black, trans 100%, all else 'none'). And add a coverall layer with the channels as you want them except that I put transparency at value 0% and put the transparency texture in the opacity channel for the top layer. This seems to remove any of the fringing effects you can get with transparency. It works great for transparency textures imported from poser. Look for a subject line of "poser transparency" for an example shader. Marc