ABSTRACT
What Are Alpha Channels? An RGB image contains three color channels — red, green, and blue. When
combined, these channels produce the full color image. The alpha channel is a
fourth channel that contains an 8-bit grayscale image. This image determines
the transparency of each pixel. Black pixels become transparent, and white
pixels are opaque. Any value in between black and white has a certain degree
of transparency. A 32-bit color image contains 24-bit color information with
an 8-bit alpha channel.
