Greetings!

So I've tried my hand at creating tattoos recently. I've been able to get it to show successfully, but there appears to be some issue with the the way I've made it or the alpha. Basically I can't layer them. Mainly because there is this faint discoloration when the tattoo overlays another. I've attached pictures for a better visualization. As you can see, basically the color of the tattoo on the left is affected by the tattoo on the right. At full size the one on the left is more faint, even though their opacity is the same. To make each one, I used the exact same images. And this problem only occurs with the tattoos I've just made, with any other tattoo. The EA and other customer tattoos I have appear to not have this issue.

Any ideas?

Possibly the background of the tattoo isn't fully transparent. The color of the tattoo itself should be pure black in the background parts, and the alpha should be pure black/transparent. However, in that case I'd expect a faint discoloration of the skin in the entire area of the tattoo, so that may not be it.

How do you have the presets set? Having no recolorable channels enabled or skipping a channel can mess up the tattoo in odd ways. (It should be R, or RG, or RGB, or RGBA.)

I thought I had the alpha completely black though. I used one of Arisuka's tattoos as kinda of a guide because I couldn't get it so that the branch part was always black. I've attached pictures of what the image files I'm using look like.

Did you happen to check if this actually sticks in game? SOmetimes the games wonky like that.

Those images look like pure black but even a few points above zero will make a difference in the tattoo, while the human eye may not be able to see it. Did you check the presets?

Could you upload the tattoo image so I can take a look and try it myself?

Sure.

I had thought that I did double check it when I making it but wasn't sure. Just double checked it before posting this, and if my eye dropper tool is correct, it should be the blackest I can go.

Sorry, I don't have Photoshop. Can you upload the DDS file or the tattoo package?

Opps sorry about that Cmar. Here is the dds, but please let me know if it works. Lately my photoshop has been in the habit of adding .psd to everything, so if I don't manually remove it, it saves as a .psd. >.<

Got it! All I can tell you right now is that something is definitely funky with this image, but I don't see anything obviously wrong with it. The only thing different I see is that the outline in the alpha is grayish. I'll try again tomorrow and let you know!

The only way I've been able to get this tattoo to work properly is to put the outline in the Green channel instead of the alpha. It looks like you just can't skip channels and use only Red and Alpha. Very strange. I've uploaded the modified image; give it a try.

Thank you so much Cmar! That is very weird that it won't let you skip the other channels. Glad that was found out for future reference though.

Glad to help! You may want to fix up that image I uploaded or make a new one - I was fiddling with the contrast of the outline too and it may not look the way you want. Very pretty tattoo, btw!