StevieJ's RectilinearArtGlass by StevieJ

original...

Thanks Craig, glad you like it It's a very simple filter, but I'm finding the effects quite useful.....and before you say it.....some of the smaller pane effects touch upon some of the effects found in Craig "Glory Stealer" Kraellin's excellent "GlassMenagerie" filter LMAO.....

I figured that I might as well beat you to the punchline LOL....

i'm not really sure. it's more of a umm, curious about question. but i do think it would have some uses as a transparent glass only, so yes.

oh, now how can you live without a little alpha grid

yes, use them (and whereas that is a bit (lol) fecicious, i do mean it ).

well, the alpha channel is just another channel, like R, G, and B. but then, you probably know that already. the trick is, it's all about opacity. and, the other trick is, it's treated slightly differently than the other channels. i'm not even sure all of the components in ff even touch it. i think some just pass it through and mostly ignore it. though, that could better be verified from vladimir or one of the other ff team. and the last trick is, you have to remember that it's a separate channel and you have to address that channel specifically. the tendency is to treat it as another color channel and it's really not. it's an opacity channel. i've fooled myself many times in doing something in the alpha channel and then doing a get alpha only to find that my changes in the alpha didnt seem to do anything. and 'seem' is the key word there. it's a little tricky. i shld post some examples of alpha channel use. just remember that when you 'get alpha' you are NOT getting R, G, or B. you are getting alpha.

the most common use is with a threshold. plug your source into the threshold and into the source on the alpha and then plug your threshold output into the new alpha node. you can then adjust the alpha channel with the threshold control.

the whole reason for 24 bit graphics was to be able to handle opacities. 8 bits for R, 8 for G, 8 for B and 8 for alpha. and one of the big reasons for wanting alpha was masks and masking. the alpha channel handles the masking.

if you look at my color range extractor and my luminosity masking, you can see some uses for the alpha channel.

well, i hope i helped. i may not have everything right about how FF treats and handles the alpha channel, but i shld be close enough that you can fool around with it and fill in anything i missed or got wrong.

thanks

well, i was referring more to what i said actually being a help as opposed to just having the intention to help... sometimes those two dont always line up

***hands steve his anvil back***

Thanx Jean, I'm always glad when you like my stuff I know that you're doing promos and I can't get to all of them right now, but I will I hope you saw the samples I posted on a couple of yours