These questions almost ended up in the shaders section but here goes.

1> In the skin editor, if i export a 32bit skin, I only get 24bit images.
Is this just me doing something dumb, or is it a known feature/problem?

2> In the skin editor, if you have a 32bit skin, why cant you turn the "alpha" tickbox off?
I always need to drop the bits back to 24 to get rid of the transparency.
If I do this, is the images alpha channel data still accessable by shaders?
(I want to store info in the alpha channel for shader use, but not as tramsparency,
can I do this WITHOUT creating another skin?)

Thanks All...

you need handle transparency on that shader, you know shader itself calculates rgba values, you set alpha to %100 (1.0f ?) and can use alpha channel for other purposes.

for exporting alpha question there is export alpha button in skin settings window.

Thats what Im doing (or trying to anyway) but all I get is that
the whole model looks "inside out" even when setting the alpha
to 1.0 (or enything else, no change).
I think this needs to go to the Shaders section, after Ive hacked at my code a bit more.

Never noticed "that" export button before. How irritating, having to export the
texture and alpha channels separately, then splice them back together before you
can import either back in?!? Ugly!

Thanks again Quadraxas.

there was flag or something like that for shaders and inside out thingy but as i am yet to mess with shaders i dont exactly know what it was.

it d be better if you ask on shaders sections(as you already said.)