okay, my mistake. i wasn’t using v11 enough to find out about this particular issue til now. it seems studio supports jpeg files for texture mapping by converting the file to alias format. this is probably where you’re getting all those .als files in your pix folder.
i’ve also seen them show up in my temp folder in my Documents and Settings. and even for files that aren’t jpeg format. weird.
my solution: use an alternate format such as tiff. if you do find yourself with a studio file where the mapping is to temp files, here’s a tip - you can change the assigned texture (and image) map paths in File > Show > File references.