| Microsoft DirectX 8.1 (Visual Basic) |
Alpha blending is used to display an image that has transparent or semi-transparent pixels. In addition to a red, green, and blue color channel, each pixel in an alpha bitmap has a transparency component known as its alpha channel. The alpha channel typically contains as many bits as a color channel. For example, an 8-bit alpha channel can represent 256 levels of transparency, from 0 (the entire pixel is transparent) to 255 (the entire pixel is opaque). The list below shows some special effects you can create using alpha blending.