I just want to add a transparent textured plane in my scene but the result comes out half transparent when rendered… any clues/tips/ideas? (see the left side has some border of the plane with the texture on it)
Without access to your blend file and texture its difficult to give a precise answer
Have you turned off specularity ?
Is it 100% transparent image ?
Have you set the alpha to zero ?
Texture influence settings ?
I think I have done the steps above… I have saved that image in gimp as png and its the same at the right side where the border isnt showing up … 
you are welcome to have a look 
kryo.zip (759 KB)
There is something abut the light (sun) in the scene that creates that distortion appear… but dont know why stillw aiting for someone to have a look at it when you guys have time. As a workaround I rendered the face on a separate layer withouut a light and just used an AlphaOver to import it in my scene… which in my opinion isn’t very efficient but does the job.
It looks to be an effect of your particle system behind a transparent plane. Particles systems and raytraced transparency can cause issues.
Thank you for this… I think I will report it as a bug and use the work around for now