Thank you for your warm words.
The idea to use images as shapes we allready have too, but unfortunately we have not the man power now to realize it.
I hope in a not so far future we have it to handle it.
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Regarding alpha channel. The SCE Bitmap effect take care about the alpha channel of gif and png files. All effects in MADRIX handle alpha for the colors, so for example if you use a SCE Color Scroll you can decide for each color the alpha value.
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With the mixmode "Mask" you can use the alpha informations of a effect to mask out the effect which is below.
For example using SCE Plasma on Layer 1 and a SCE Radial (which includes alpha values) on Layer 2 using the "Mask" mixmode for Layer 2 will result in a Radial with the colors of the Plasma, because the radial shape is used because of it´s alpha values to mask out the Plasma!