People Behind the Pixels

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alpha channel

  • All
  • Lucasfilm
  • Pixar
  • Computer Scientist
  • President
  • NYIT
  • Disney
  • Pioneer
  • software engineer
  • pioneer
  • compositing
  • The fourth RGBA information channel that contains 8-bit grayscale values used in compositing. It was co-developed by Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith at the New York Institute of Technology in 1977. Why "alpha?" According to Smith, image composition uses simple linear interpretation in which the Greek letter "A" (alpha) controls the amount of interpolation between two images.

  • Ed Catmull, Tom Porter, Tom Duff, and Alvy Ray Smith received a Scientific and Technical Academy Award in 1996 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for "pioneering inventions in digital image compositing" (basically, for the invention of the alpha channel).

  • Scientific and Technical Academy Award

    Ed Catmull, Tom Porter, Tom Duff, and Alvy Ray Smith received a Scientific and Technical Academy Award in 1996 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for "pioneering inventions in digital image compositing" (basically, for the invention of the alpha channel).