I am working on a custom guitar-builder in flash. I am trying to make it so that it is possible to pick any RGB color and still have the thing look realistic. I would like to import some sort of png or swf transperancy with alpha gradients that will simply covers a solid color that is masked under the png. Neither thing I've tried so far works. I have tried to adjust the opacity of the png in photoshop and then import it into flash, but it looks bad when I place it over a solid color. I have also tried to create the gradients by tracing out the original guitar image with black/alpha gradients. But it ends up losing its realistic look with that, even though the colors come through well. Any ideas?

-Andy

You could have a black and white picture over a solid color, that might look better.