So, the project I'm working on at the moment has a 2D section to it. The background is drawn, then the player, then any "scenery objects" on top of that, to allow the player to go behind objects. These scenery objects just need cut out of the background TGA files, and can use either an alpha channel, or magenta. The editor program wil read these files, and auto place the scenery by matching the pixels.
The scenery object TGAs also need converted to BMP for the Nintendo convertor program, since it only accepts BMPs (and spits out a few DS-specific files).

Sounds simple, yes? No. First of all, the artist who's making the scenery objects was told to write the BMPs as 8-bit. That kinda makes sense, since we only have a budget of 16 colours per scenery object, so it'll be cut down anyway. The problem is, that he's saved the 8-bit BMPs, and no TGAs. So none of the scenery can be auto-placed by the editor. We tried hacking the editor to accept "near matches", but that caused a few false placings, and is a bit ugly.
Secondly, the few files that have been saved as TGA have been cut out of the background and blended slightly. Photoshop seems to have blurred things around the edge of the selection tool - again meaning they don't match up.
Thirdly, the artist doesn't have the tool program on his machine, so he can't check this. I intend to get him set up with it tomorrow (he's off today).

So, today consists of me going through about 70 images, and re-cutting them from the background, using MS Paint and Irfanview to convert TGA <-> BMP.
I installed GIMP, and tried using it, and failed miserably. I'm sure it's all very nice if I had the time or patience to learn how to use it, but I don't.

*sigh*

Oh well, back to work...