title: How to read the original alpha channel from PNG in J2ME?
body: <p>I'm writing a simple J2ME game that uses PNG images with 8-bit alpha channel. Problem: not all hardware supports full alpha transparency rendering. However, since my game is pretty static in nature (at the beginning, "sprites" are layed out onto background image, based on current screen size, and that's about it), I thought it would be possible to prerender those transparent images directly onto background during game initialization and use that later in game. I can't prerender them in Photoshop as their positions are not known in advance.</p>
  
  <p>But, it seems there is no way to read the original alpha channel on devices that do not support semi-transparency as it gets resampled during PNG loading. Is there some library that can help with that? Or is it a good idea to store alpha channels separately (e.g. as separate 8-bit PNG images) and manually apply them?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>