I read in another post that you can save renders with transparent backgrounds on Photoshop. I tried doing what the post suggested (namely save the render with default bg color in PSD format) but it didn't work. Can anyone help me save something with transparent background? Does it only work with Firefly or can it work with any render? I also heard about the Alpha Channel in Photoshop... how do you use that to remove the background color?

I find the best way of saving renders with a transparent background is to render against black then export the image as a .PNG, then when I open it in Photoshop I save it as a PSD after adding trillions of layers ;-) There might be another way but this one works for me Gill

Uhm if you've saved it as a psd (or a tiff) you have an alpha channel and therefore a transparent background :) In photoshop, go to Select -> Load Selection -> Alpha channel and there you og, your character is now selected. You can invert the selection to select only the background and then delete it. Remember to promote the background layer to a full layer or it won't be transparent :o)

What colour you render over has nothing to say. All that matters is that it's saved in a format that supports an alpha channel. And yes, png does that too. Personally I prefer tiff as I can use that in all sorts of programs, and it's totally lossless.

That's not true. IIRC if you save as a Tiff the bg color effects the level of transparency... Or I could be thinking about TGAs in Truespace... anyway I always render tiffs with a pure black background. Odd thing though. I use Bauhaus Mirage for compositing, and for some reason the Tiffs that Poser exports don't import into Mirage with proper alpha. So I load them into photoshop and convert them to tgas (I have an action for this) and then they import right. (shrug)

"IIRC if you save as a Tiff the bg color effects the level of transparency..." Not for me. :) Occasionally the mask comes out inverted for some weird reason, but that's easily re-inverted. I use Paint Shop Pro, incidentally; Mask -> import from alpha channel and you're there.

I always use PNG. Drop the image into Photoshop and there's no background. :)

Just remember, PNG isn't available on P4.

Didn't know that, Chuck.

or another way to select the alpha channel is to hold down CTRL and CLICK on the Alpha Channel in the Channels Palette. Then I make the selection a new layer CTRL+J, and the delete the pixels in the Backgound layer (or delete the Background Layer). I usually save as a PSD, so that I can save the file straight away, without having to 'save as'.