Saving Photoshop 5.0 files as PNG for Transparency

[colleen7699]

Hi! I am just starting to play around with creating fibers in Photoshop, however when I save the files they end up with a white background. I understand I am suppose to do something with an alpha channel, but haven't figured it out yet. If anybody could help me with this I would appreciate it!!!

[Lauren]

Now Im none too sure about pngs with photoshop 5 - some of the older programmes did not support transparent pngs well at all - ive done a bit of web research for you and I dont think I am going to be much help

http://user.fundy.net/morris/redirect.html?photoshop3.shtml
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00190.htm
and this

.......Photoshop 5.0.2, available for Macintosh and 32-bit Windows, is the latest version of Adobe's flagship image editor, as of this writing. It supports colormapped, grayscale, and RGB PNGs at sample depths of 8 bits, and images optionally can be saved as interlaced. Alpha transparency is supported in grayscale and truecolor images, but there appears to be no way to add any sort of transparency to a palette-based image........ is from this site
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pngdefg/chapter/ch04.html.

[Lauren]

also found this

Photoshop 5 includes a wizard for creating transparent images, but we'll step through the procedure manually. The key is not to rely on background transparency but instead to add a new layer representing alpha transparency. More specifically, given an image with or without background transparency, do the following to add an alpha channel to it:

In the Channels palette, click on the arrow at the upper right and select New Channel..., which pops up a dialog box.
In the Name: entry field, give the new channel a name (for example, Alpha) and click the OK button; the other fields can be left with their default values.
In the Channels palette again, return to the original RGB or grayscale channel.
Click on the Lasso tool (left side of tool palette, second from top).
In the Lasso Options tab of the tool palette, set the Feather radius to some value, perhaps 13.
Draw a loop around the face of the subject.
Do not invert the Lasso selection; instead go back to the Channels palette and select the alpha channel (the lassoed loop will still be visible on the blank channel).
Erase everything outside the loop via Edit --> Clear.
Once again, return to the original RGB or grayscale channel via the Channels palette, and optionally click on the visibility box of the alpha channel to show its effects overlaid on the main image.
The preceding Lasso-related operations differ from those in every other image editor I investigated, including Adobe's own ImageReady 1.0. Specifically, the requirement not to invert the selection in order to erase the outer part of the alpha channel seemed counterintuitive.[1]

[1] It should be noted, however, that I am by no means an expert with any of the image editors described here! It is entirely possible that there are settings or alternative approaches that conform more closely to the ``standard'' Lasso procedure used in the other programs.
Having added an appropriate alpha channel to the image, it may now be saved as a 16-bit gray+alpha or 32-bit RGBA PNG:

Choose File --> Save a Copy..., which pops up the usual file dialog box.
Pick an appropriate directory and filename for the image, choose PNG as the format, and make certain the Exclude Alpha Channels checkbox is not checked.
Click the OK button, which triggers yet another dialog box.
Optionally create an interlaced PNG by selecting Adam7 as the interlacing type, and make sure the filter type is Adaptive for grayscale or truecolor images.
Click the OK button.
If transparency is only desired as an aid in creating the image, not as part of the actual file data, check the Flatten Image box in the Save dialog box.

at the same site as I mentioned above