Trasparency / alpha shows up as half-transparency?

Hello. I am using UMG to make a text box, and I have it set up to where the name box is surrounded by two “image” things in a horizontal box. The textures that surround the name box the player sees need to have transparencies to fit my design, but transparency on these textures are not working correctly. Instead of being able to see through where the alpha channel is, the opacity comes out as a black shade with like 50% transparency.

I’ve attached an image to describe my issue. On the right is a blank image I created to track down the problem, it has no data in it (that I know of) other than it being totally transparent, and on the other side of where it says “speaker name,” is the texture I wanted to use, and you can see the same effect happens where it’s supposed to be transparent.

If it matters, I am using Windows 10 and GIMP for texture editing. I’ve read online in some places that GIMP handles alpha channels weird, but UE4 detects it has an alpha channel and trying the same technique in paint.net yields the same result.

Oh, and I’ve also tried making the raw texture (png) file into a user interface material and connecting the alpha channel pin from the texture sample to the opacity mask (with a masked domain/whatever) but I end up with the same issue in the end.

The image item in UMG has all of its color/tint values set to “1.”

Any help is appreciated, this issue is driving me insane. I’ve tried so many different things that seem to be relevant to my issue from this and other sources, but I cannot find this same issue online elsewhere.

129755-ue4editor_2017-03-12_15-55-01.png

Tried exporting the image as a TGA from gimp, still no luck. What is the dealio here

Whoa, surprise surprise, turns out the border widget my image widget was contained in had an alpha value not set to default. WHOOPSIES…