First of all thanks for your time and assistance. It's greatly appreciated. I followed your instructions to the best of my ability, maybe I'm denser than I thought I was as what you offered didn't seem very complicated, and still have a problem. I opened Bryce 4 and selected the "2D face vertical." I then went to "edit 2D pictures." In the first (pict image) window I loaded the cat (cat.gif) image. Moving to the second (alpha image) window I tried two different approaches. First I loaded the cat.gif image into the alpha image window and then inverted the alpha image which turned the cat white and the rest of the image black. In the second I returned to PSP6 and created a "transparent" image of the cat.gif image which rendered the same effect as the inversion of the image in the alpha window in Bryce 4, cat white, everything else black. I then saved that image, returned to Bryce, and loaded it intothe alpha window. In both cases, the resulting image in the third (combination image) window is the same. The black cat with the checker board background. In that image however, the checker board is still slightly visible thru the cat. As a result of this, if I then copy the combination image to the 2D vertical, and then create a yellow sphere and place it behind the cat, the sphere is visible thru the image of the cat. Am I missing something? Or is it possible this transparency problem is perhaps rooted in the PSP image itself? Thanks P.S.- By the way. I pasted http://www.brycetech.com/tutor/bryce/2d1.html into my browser and all that loads is a blank page.