I am using Robert Purves (fantastic) OpenGL tutorial utilities in a
section of my project. To create an alpha, it loads up two files, the main
graphic and the alpha channel, and combines them together for OpenGL to
display. (The alpha channel is used to define the irregular edges of the
graphic displayed). It works very well. But I am now loading up a ton of
graphics into my OpenGL program and its getting slower and s-l-o-w-e-r to
load. One way of speeding the load time would be use pre-loaded alpha
channels which you can do within PNG type graphic files.

Has anyone already tried to do this and have some code to share?