GIMP + imagetool - Alpha Channels

[dlane]

Disregard, user error. For anyone else that may find this helpful: big picture was I opened a .psd with ImageTool to compress it as a .bmp, but all I saw was the black alpha channel layered over the textures and assumed something was wrong and didn't proceed further. Just to pass time I decided to save the image to see what would happen - when I selected Image->Format->DXT5 (or your choice) the alpha channel was in its place and the textures were good to go. I now have stunning 2048x2048 textures:

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v141/mco422/AI_prime_4.png

 

Original post for more detail:

 

I am painting FAIB's A32S for FSX and for those unfamiliar with the models you must adjust the alpha channel to show/hide satcoms and other dorsal antennas.

 

Using GIMP for the painting: I created the alpha channel by selecting channels->add channel and titled it Alpha 1.

 

Paint complete, alpha channel correct, export as .psd for use with ImageTool and retain the custom alpha channel.

 

When I open the file in image tool, all I see is the black alpha channel with the paint job showing through the alpha channel's white areas. 'View Alpha Channel' is not selected at this point. Seeing the 'invert alpha' option I try that out and the paint looks right, but when viewing the alpha channel the colors are (no surprise) inverted.

 

I'm assuming there's some major step I'm missing but any tutorial on the subject that I can find uses photoshop. Any support for non-photoshop users reference DXTBmp but I'm avoiding that program due to the artifacts that are created during compression.