fultro,
you didn't say what kind of images you were working with, but here's a tip you may find useful (or not):

Use graphical forms and other figures in the form of fonts (you know, dingbats and stuff) with the Vegas text generator. It's easy to scale them and to manipulate alpfa, colour and whatnot. Another tip, if you have a solid form figure and make both it and the background transparent, you can add a very thin outline for a subtle effect. And then you can keyfram the background or the figure to gradually obtain opacity. Even at 0.000 there will be a hairline outline - a very good feature.

There are many useful fonts out there, although the majority of them are rather
ridiculous.
Tor

You can use Photoshop layers in Vegas but it is a manual process. If you have CS it is fairly easy. Under scripts there is an export layers to files script. You can then add the individual layers on their own tracks and manipulate each layer independently.

With versions earlier than CS you can still do it but you have to save each layer manually.

Not an elegant solution but not that difficult.

No offense meant to anyone for so kindly responding here but I feel like something really essential is not getting across in translation one way or the other and I am freely admitting that it could be me.
I said that I have used flattened (re: no layers) images with an alpha channel that opens properly in Boris or Combustion but willl not do so in Vegas 4 or 5.
This is not about trying to get layers to open in Vegas - the filess in question have been flattened.
fultro

Are you using premultiplied alpha in Vegas?

I was just going to ask that. I use that setting when going from Boris to Vegas and it works for me.

I think I am - in Vegas Explorer the info on the files says that it is Premultiplied
and just to be sure I have gone into Properties of the individual events on the timeline and it first indicates Premult. I then tried all the various settings there ( pre mult, stright, none etc. ) with no change fultro

fultro,

You are having a problem with something that many of use do frequently.

Can you please outline the exact steps you are taking in Photoshop to create this and then in Vegas to use it?

You did provide some detail above, but that wasn't enough information.

I create a new doc in Photoshop and fill it with a color - nothing else in the image;
Then select any area - say a simple oval;
Save the selection - so that it shows up as an alpha channel;
Save the flattened file;
Open it in Boris or Combustion and I see only the oval - the selected area that I wanted - this is how I think it should all work - please correct me if I am wrong
Then I try opening iit in Vegas only to see the entire colored document with no transparent areas, and it indicates it is premultiplied
This is the simplest example I can come up with
As you say - this is something that many do all the time which is why this is becoming extremely frustrating - I have tried various things here but obviously am missing something critical... I am new to this masking business so I am not am not sure I understand what all the factors to look for are
Again, any help is greatly appreciated...

fultro

What do you mean by "open in Vegas"?

Put it on the T/L?

Yes, I put it on the timeline as a track above a solid color media track below
I do nothing with the compositing options on the tracks - they are both left as parents and source alpha
what I get is not the oval but the complete original colored canvas with no transparency around the oval that would allow me to see the track below
furthermore - if all I do is preview the file in Vegas Explorer - I get the same results with, of course, no 2nd channel

Have you tried saving the image as a .png?

I just did exactly what you are describing, works perfectly.

What versions of Vegas and Photoshop are you using?

Photoshop CS and Vegas 5
As I say the files created this way open properly in Boris and Combustion, so I would say I have a problem with Vegas except that the same thing happens when I try it with Vegas 4
A real pain I must say - I am hoping for a so;ution that avoids re-install - especially PS which I have painstakingly confogured - I guess I could find its config file and save it
Yikes

I just made 2 in Paintshop. One was black with transparent circle. The other was black with white circle.

Both saved as png.

The first came up with an alpha circle and the video below shows through. The second I added the mask generator fx and applied a luminance filter and the white is transparent but can be inverted.

thanks - you and a previous message got me exploring png which didn't work because it seems Photoshop CS still doesn't support the png alpha capability
so your suggestion eventually led me to try tif which didn't work either

I just saved as [flattened] .psd as always, no need for TIF etc.

Could you try to create something with transparency in Combustion and take this into Vegas? If that doesn't work, you may need to reinstall Vegas (although it seems more than odd).

OK --- thank-you - good idea -- finally some movement on the issue
I saved an sTGA (and others) in Combustion and irt opens fine in Vegas
So it looks like I need to re-install PS unless you have any other ideas on this one
I really appreciate your hanging in there on this one
fultro

I had Photoshop CS go bad on one machine, had to reinstall. This fixed it immy.

yes well I just re-installed it myself and it did not fix the prob
I'm on to re-installing Vegas

Crap my curiousity sure causes alot of work sometimes.

I saved the png I made in PSP as a PSD and it didn't work in Vegas. So I downloaded and installed Photoshop.

I saved the png as a PSD in Photoshop and it worked fine in Vegas.

Then I thought I would make another from scratch in Photoshop.

I start with a transparent background. I draw a circle and Photoshop fills it with black.

I spent a half hour trying to find out how to make it just draw a circle and going through the help file and finally gave up.

I hate Adobe products.

thanks for your efforts
I too once had problems learning Photoshop - but there came a point a few years ago when I really needed certain functions and had to dig in - and I mean a week at a time at varioius times digging into books and on-line tutorials where I did nothing else but learn and make the shit work for my particular project
the work has paid off - though I am nowhere close to saying I am any kind of expert - I will say I have found ways to be creative with this app that very few others rival - it is truly one of the most amazing pieces of software out there - I am always discovering new and interesting things to do with generated graphics and photos both
but I do sympathize with you and I would add that you probably shouln't waste your time with it until you really want to bust ass over it for a while fultro

You have me stumped on this one. I followed your explanation of your method and was able to save to both psd and png formats with alpha and had no problem with them in Vegas. After you have created the file can you reload it in Photoshop and still have the alpha channel visible. I know that occassionally I will mess up somehow and actually have a background layer that I didn't intend. Have you tried creating the file with a transparent background rather than a color to begin with. Shouldn't make any difference but sometimes you never know.