How do I make badge and banner backgrounds transparent?

[solidzaku]

Okay, I'm having no trouble with getting the files to appear (No trouble with making it in TGA format) and i can put my picture on the units. Trouble is, i only want a certain symbol to show up, not the white (black or reddish) background. In other words, what program should I use when making this picture? I doubt Microsoft Paint will work, but who knows....

I don't think I'm doing the background correctly. How do you make the background transparent and the thing you put on it appear? I'm using Microsoft Picture it 7.0 Do I need Adobe Photoshop? I pray to god I don't. I don't know if it matters but i keep up to date on my patches, and I don't do mods (programming retard RIGHT HERE) does that hurt my chances of getting this right?

[IBBoard]

Paint won't stand a chance! What you need is anything that'll do TGA format properly. Normal recommendations are Photoshop (Photoshop 6 or 7 will be fine if you can pick them up cheap at a Computer Fair or something), Jasc's Paint Shop Pro or the open source The GIMP. Fireworks would also be an option, but not if you don't like Photoshop's price. Other software might work as well (Corel Photopaint is the only name I can think of at the moment) but they're not what most people use.

I think someone has used Picture It successfully, but I don't know who and personally I'd never go anywhere near it unless it was an absolute last resort! That's more of a Microsoft thing, though.

The way you should do transparent background (as it says in the Badges and Banners FAQ) is to use an Alpha channel. This channel is like the red, green and blue channels of a normal image, but controls transparency. Photoshop will allow you to edit the Alpha Channel directly, some other programs need you to create 'transparency masks' and work from their. I'd check the Picture It readme for "alpha transparency" and see what it says.