I use Hemera's PhotoObjects. In that, I save at full size TIFF. (JPG's dont contain alpha data) - They then come with an alpha mask. Some librarys actually have a clipping path which is even more accurate.

Attached Link: http://www.robneal.plus.com

If you just want a graduated selection, use the Quickmask (Q key) and use a black to clear grad. Switch Quickmask off and you can paint into it or make a layer mask.

Personally, I would use a vector art app, like Illustrator, to produce all the "swirly" lines and stuff. Photoshop is not much good at line art. There is a good plugin for Illustrator called "Array" from Panopticum for this. One trick I have used in the past is to "trace" the bitmap into vectors, and then drop the fills, and re-overlay the vector lines over the bitmap, so you get lots of fine lines. I would also reccomend you do the artwork in a high resolution as otherwise you will lose all that hard earned detail.

One of my favourites is Kai Krauses "Snowy mask" - should be easy to find on a search engine. Quick way is take any pic, desaturate, heavily gaussian blur, and then use curves. Use this as a reflection map.

Yeah, but you will have to keep PS7 installed. Only other way is to overwrite the old PS dir.

Try scanning without anything in the neg holder. You should end up with white scans. If you dont, then its the scanner. That said, it does look like a processing problem, sometimes you get it on the end of a roll - have you had more than 24 or 36 shots, maybe it's an "extra".

Don't use hand-held under 1/60th minimum. if you havent got a tripod, lean the camera against a wall or something solid - (the camera, not you). Remember photography is all about light, the less you have, the more you have to allow for by opening up the aperture and/or lowering the shutter speed.

Try Panopticum's "Fire" plugin. it's about as close as you can get...

Nobody's perfect, so there will always be problems when introducing new software. The way you use Photoshop could be entirely different to the way I use it, and a certain combination of events could possibly crash it. It's not possible to predict every possible permutation without letting it into "the wild" so to speak. That said, to release an unfinished version to publicly beta test a product is a heinous crime. One which I know Microsoft and Corel do regularly. (Incidentally, Microsoft do not have bugs, they have "undocumented features" - yeah, right). That said, if a product regularly crashes or does not do what it claims, you are quite within your rights to return the goods, no matter what the licence or the shop you bought it from say.

I doubt they will ever do that. Bottom line is, JPG is a cheesy, amateur format for quick images. PSD is a native format for accurate work. You cant have your cake and eat it. Sorry Mate.

The JPEG2000 spec apparently has 32bit depth, alpha channels, animation and superior compression. Whether it actually made it to reality is another matter - I'm still waiting.

Mail me the action, and I'll have a look. Tryptych@yahoo.com

It's Page 3 ackcherlee. ;o)

I said "The London Times" because most non-Brits wouldn't understand that I was talking about a newspaper now owned by an Australian megalomaniac. (PS: Try looking up the word "irony")