Re: Problem opening tga's with alpha channel

[Milkman] "When I open a tga or any image with a transparent background, I get the drawing with a white background"

If the .tga is using an alpha channel I believe you'll have to set this alpha as a layer mask to see the transparency. Photoshop doesn't take alpha channels into account when determining transparency. I'm guessing this is because Photoshop documents can have 1, 2, 5, 10 or more alpha channels, which are often used for filters (Lighting Effects, Lens Blur come to mind) instead of defining transparencies.

To set an alpha to a layer mask you can cmd-click (ctrl-click) that alpha channel in your channels tab of the layer palette, then choose the layer you want to mask and Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection.

This Layer Mask will give you a preview of how your .tga file will look in other programs that use the alpha channel as transparency.