Skinning question

[Compans57]

I started doing a VIIB skin a couple of years ago and have forgotten how to do something simple.

I need to use default skins as templates.

I try opening them in Gimp and they view as the texture with an alpha channel on top, so you can't see the actual coloured skin. As it shows as one layer, if a use the 'remove alpha channel' command it creates a very greyed out version. Kind of like a specular map.

Can someone remind me how to remove the alpha channel?

Thanks.