Unit Icon background transparency problem

[cbssecman]

This may not be the right forum to ask a graphics question, but here it is:

I modified the icon german_scout.dds by "repainting" the uniform and turned it into a ss_scout.dds. Everything is just fine except that the background is black instead of transparent, even though it shows as transparent in my editing software (GraphicConverter 9 on a Mac).

What I did: I opened the original file german_scout.dds, saved it as a .PNG (ss_scout.png), edited it using GraphicConverter 9, saved it as SS_Scout.DDS. I added the file to the ICONS folder in my test campaign. Opened the game, loaded the test scenario, moused over the unit, and the newly edited icon appears in the lower right; however, it's inside a big black square...

I got the same result when I skipped converting it to .PNG and just edited it directly as a .dds.

Can anybody tell me what I might be doing wrong?

Thanks
CB

[makigono1]

I had a similar problem too, when editing unit icons (using Photoshop on Mac). There are others here who can probably come up with a better way, but I'll explain what I did to fix this when I ran into trouble. I needed to make sure of the following:
a.) That the DDS file I was editing had an alpha channel (In PS, I can add one if it isn't there, so I assume this is a common feature)
b.) That all the areas of the image that I wanted transparent were blacked out in that alpha channel.

Again, I might be all wet here, but that is what worked for me. (I recently replaced all the leader icons with the dudes from the Squad Leader box covers, LoL)

PM me if you're still having any trouble with that.