PNG or TGA to edit character skin and clothing textures?

[Ramsus543]

I'm asking because I tried to edit a piece of the starter priest robe to make it more blue, I converted the blp to a tga, changed the colors, and checked the alpha channel which I had noticed was completely black so I filled in where the robe texture actually was and then converted it back into a BLP shoved it in an MPQ and loaded the game.

Unfortunately instead of recoloring the robe, that part completely vanished instead.
I had a similar issue when I tried to edit a skin texture, the face loaded because I never edited it but the skin didn't load at all.

Should I be using PNG format for skin and clothing retextures? TGA has been fine with building, ground, and creature retextures, so this has me a bit baffled.

[BanzBoyz77]

You don't recolor using Alpha channels, alpha channels control transparency of an image, better off doing this if you're using Photoshop: Go to Image>Adjustment>Replace Color, click the eye droper with a plus next to it and highlight the areas you want to recolor on your tga. Then use the replacement functions to recolor your tga ( Hue, Saturation, Lightness)

Edit
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Make sure to delete your alpha channel.

[Ramsus543]

You don't recolor using Alpha channels, alpha channels control transparency of an image, better off doing this if you're using Photoshop: Go to Image>Adjustment>Replace Color, click the eye droper with a plus next to it and highlight the areas you want to recolor on your tga. Then use the replacement functions to recolor your tga ( Hue, Saturation, Lightness)

Edit
--------
Make sure to delete your alpha channel.

Sorry I guess I didn't explain properly my bad, so far when I've edited all my retextures there's alpha channels already in the .tga's, and if the alpha channel wasn't completely white or white where I needed it to be I'd get this weird stripe thing. I did delete the alpha channel like you suggested and it still didn't help, the clothing part I edited still isn't there and the skin still doesn't load, any creature, object, or building edit I've done has worked though so I'm not sure what it is...I am using photoshop if that has anything to do with it.

As a reference I do have a screenshot of an edit I did in the thread on this board called Flame Effect on Demon Crystals in Silvermoon, should still be on the first page unless a handful of topics have been made since then. What I don't understand is why that edit works and clothing/skinning edits I try won't.

[BanzBoyz77]

If your going to be retexturing a robe, you need all 6 parts to it in the new mpq file you made. If you send me a screenshot of the robes in Photoshop I can recolor them all myself to save you some time. There are 3 parts to a robe- Chest, Kilt, and Sleeves. Each part has 2 blp files to it- The lowerpart and the Upperpart. If you tell me what race starting priest robe you are recoloring I'll locate all the files for you. Don't touch Alpha Channels for recoloring. Harder plus more errors come out of it. If this doesn't help, if your using 3.3.5a and have a screeny of how you want the robe to look at the end, I'll recolor it myself for you.