Mpalash is right Defringing is the solution,however for it to work properly,only defringe at the very end when you have completed your post production work and are ready to flatten the image.You should have only the final poser figure image on one layer,above the finished background. (This is because defringe mixes the edge pixels of your upper layer with pixels from directly around the image in the layer below it.)

Dreamer 101 is correct.If you are printing with CMYK on white paper,then no white ink is used it just leaves the area uncoloured so there is no need to remove the white from the image.If it intrudes over another image,use a clipping path. You could always work in RGB (so that you can use the filters),but keep the CMYK preview mode on,so that you can see how the final image will look even before you convert it to send to the printers. Or how about,working in CMYK then selecting a couple of white areas then using Select-Similar,which will select the remainder of the white areas on the layer and just deleting.

By rendered image I take it you mean rendered in another programme,such as poser or bryce. Both of these programmes support alpha channels in tiff or photoshop formats. You do as your doing and load the Alpha channel as a selection,then go to the quick mask button and click on quickmask.If you double click the quickmask icon you should get an options pallette that allows you to set the mask as covering selected or none selected areas. If you want to refine the mask you now need to do some panting around areas like hair in close up.Once your happy with the painted quickmask,turn it back into a selection.If your main figure is selected I find it best to copy then paste the selection onto a new layer,then I,m free to do what I want with the background.If not invert the selection. Varying opacity is easily handled by duplicating the image on another layer.Removing the semitransparent section from the top layer allowing the duplicate to show through and altering the opacity of the duplicate layer to allow some background to show through.

If you want a visible mask,go to the quickmask button at the very bottom of the tools pallette and click on it.It looks like a circle inside a square.One is quickmask on the other off. By default the selected area will turn up as a red coloured mask.You can change colour & opacity) You can then alter the mask with any of the tools by selecting the default black & white colours in the tool pallette.Painting in black will add to the mask,white will cut away.You can use airbrush ect to feather the edge. When you convert back to selection it will act as a mask retaing the information of the painted one.

If your creating the animation in poser you can choose to have it rendered in cartoon form or cartoon with line form by selecting that as display mode & choosing "render as display mode". You could also choose to render each frame as an image file"render as image file" and select the type you want ie Jpg or Bmp etc. Save the images in one folder,take it into photoshop.Load one of the images & treat it as you require.Record this as an action.You can then just let the computer batch process all of the remaining frames whilst you go for a beer. When done load the folder as a file into after effects or Premier & render as an AVI.(or whatever)

Place a layer over the image and fill with black.Render the Lens flare on the black layer then set the layer to screen.This should leave a desaturated version of the Lens flare over your image & the black should vanish without affecting the colours of the image beneath.

Attached Link: http://www.actionxchange.com/

The attached link is the photoshop action exchange.They have a number of tutorials that might be worth a look at that may/may not be of assistance. You say the palette is there but you can,t do anything with it!!!! Probably a stupid question but when you have the palette up you are LEFT clicking on the top right arrow & not RIGHT clicking to get up the menu options. Prehaps you could try going to the upper Windows drop down menu & clicking on the bottom one "reset palette locations" which should give you history & actions on a seperate box and left clicking again.If you get the option to load palettes,you could try reloading the default palettes from the goodies folder. Running out of options. Good luck DLM

Not 100% sure on this one but I can think of a couple of possibles to check. The actions menu normaly sits alongside,Layers,Channels ect & they show & hide together,but they can be seperated.Once you seperate them(Just click on the top name tag & drag away ) they act independantly of each other. On the off chance your action menu has been "ripped off",check the drop down windows menu for show/hide actions. If it still shows "hide actions" then check the bottom of your screen to see if you have accidently minimized it and its hiding in your status bar.

Attached Link: http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/1e946.htm

I dont know of a shortcut key,but if you want to apply the SAME action to a number of similar documents, you can use batch processing and let the computer do the laborious repetitive work. Put all the documents in one folder & then create another folder to recieve the processed images.Go to file-automate-batch.The resultant pop-up menu is pretty self explanitory,select the folder with the documents,specify the action,then select the target folder,and click O.K. That,s about all there is to it. There is a fuller explanation including some more complex variations at the attached link.

You can alter the size of a regular (round) brush whilst working with it, by using the bracket keys "[ and ]" to alter it up and down through a set scale from 1 pixel to 999 pixels.Saves having to keep going back to the palette, It doesn,t appear to work for custom brushes,but there may be a way of customising this feature to do so, that I haven,t found yet.

I,m not sure what your after here.If someone has told you about a new photoshop plug in programme then prehaps you could check & see what else it does & see if that rings a bell with anyone.If your after the same fire effects as your sample pictures then,trust me,they are done with volumetric fire in Bryce rendered on a black background and copied onto a layer set to "screen" then tidied up with a little fading & erasing.I suggest you go with Varien & check with the artist. I cant say how the space was done,but I,m pretty damn sure about the fire in the samples you have linked to.

Attached Link: http://www.phase2.net/claygraphics/volumetricfire.html

I don,t think the fire has been done with a "Photoshop" plug-in.I,m pretty sure it,s been done post production using a Bryce, volumetric texture plug-in, which is available for free from Claygraphics site at the above link. If you do a search on "fire" in the Bryce forum here at Renderosity , also check out the links to the "Fire & Ice" tutorials which cover how to use the texture. If you do checkout the Claygraphics link hit the back button & check out Clays amazing space pictures in the Gallery.They are very similar to what you are after & it may be that there are some tutorials on that as well here in the Bryce forums.

Attached Link: http://www.digitalwebgold.com/index.htm

The attached link should lead you to a site devoted to metalic effect tutorials.

Attached Link: http://www.actionxchange.com

If you search through the Action Xchange site at the attached link there are a number of downloadable actions that create similar effects.

I tried "X-Ray" on a Jpg of Britney Spears,but the resolution of the original image must have been too high or something.Instead of the anticipated full skeleton, all I got was a nude Britney Spears.I mean, come on, what good is that?You should say if there,s limitations to these filters.