Hello Building gui graphics is not easy...yeah. I'm using Photoshop...sometimes GIMP. I tried to assign an alpha value to serve as the transparent color value for color keying instead of alpha blending. BUT it's not accurate at all that the controls look distorted at the edges... what's the best way to give accurate pixel level alpha value to the image. The buttons can have shadows, icons may be elippsoids... Help appreciated.

If you used gif, it usually has bad quality. Maybe trying a different format would work? Just a thought.

I'm using bmp format. GIF does not have alpha cannel btw.

test

How are you currently creating your alpha-channel? From your problem description it sounded like you were only using two colors on your alpha channel, which would lead to jagged edges.

Generally speaking the shapes you use to color your GUI components should also be the shapes on the alpha layer of your image, if you follow this then objects will be entirely accurate and have nice smooth edges even if anti-aliasing is on.

So for example you would copy your button to the alpha layer and make sure it is filled black, then you would copy the shadow layer and do the same. Obviously you don't need to copy the fonts or textural data to the alpha layer because you want these to be opaque (usually).