I saw a tutorial a long time ago that you can create transparent and semi transparent bmp's using alpha channels in photoshop. The specific tutorial changed the start button logo and made parts of it transparent and semi transparent.
I was wondering if anyone could explain to me how to do it or if you somehow find the website that I found the tutorial on.

P.S. The new start button logo was a house in the webiste

You don't need to do that. Just create a transparent background layer, and then delete/erase everything from the layer on top you don't want to see.

---------------
Glomping the internet populace.

One forum at a time.

 
But I am modifying a bitmap image and saving it as a bitmap, so it doesn't support background transparency. In the situation I'm talking about, magenta(255,0,255) is used as 100% transparency but I'm wondering how I can get semi-transparent transparency with bitmaps.