Seeing as patch 3.1 is being released today I thought I would mark this occasion with a small tutorial on creating images for your addons.
For this tutorial I will be using Photoshop, but if you know your way around your favourite image editing program it shouldn’t make much of a difference.
First off, you need to remember a small simple rule. The image size must always be a multiple of 8, otherwise your image wont show up (correct me if I’m wrong in a comment, but it has never worked for me with any other number that isn’t a multiple of 8). What does that mean ? Well, basically your image should have one of the following dimensions:
8×8
16×16
32×32
64×64
128×128
And so on…
Important Note : Images for addons must be in TGA (Targa) format set to 32 bits/pixel!
So, let’s get cracking! Here we have a simple ball looking thing I want to show in wow. As you can see, it’s nothing special and in a 64×64 document you just do your normal creative thing.
If we tried to save and use this now, the transparent background will show as white, so we need to set an Alpha channel which is the whole trick behind it.
So, make a selection of what you want to be seen, in this case it’s the circle. Like so:
Then, in Photoshop, select the Channels tab which lives where your layers are shown.
As you can see, there is no Alpha channel as of yet, so we add this by clicking the ‘Save selection as channel’ button at the bottom.
Once you press that, you should see another channel appear which looks like so:
And now, we are ready to save our file! Go to File > Save and select Targa as your file format. Also note how there is a tick next to Alpha Channels. If you tried to save the file without creating the Alpha channel this option is greyed out.
Go ahead and hit save, you should now be prompted to set the bits per pixel, make sure you select 32 bits/pixel.
Hit OK and you are all done! Congratulations! Your picture should now be ready for use in your addon!
On a side note, if you are making lots of images for your addon as you go, make sure you exit WoW completely when introducing new files to your addon directory. WoW will not recognise the new file until you exit and load up again.
Happy addon creating!
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