Channels masking and other tips

[Rhoads238]

Hey all,

I have made it a goal to learn to more effectively use photoshop. I have a good understanding of the basic stuff. Currently I am using cs6 on a mac. I want to learn to use channels as light masks. This is the page I found a tutorial

http://photoshoptutorials.ws/photosh...e-photoshop/3/

They are using cs5 which seems to be a little different and may be causing me some confusion but i just cant seem to get it to work.

Also if anyone has suggested reading for some of the more advanced techniques of cs6 that would be great. Someone had posted a thread showing their workflow on a seascape not long ago. I wish i could remember the thread or I would post a link to it. There was a lot of great techniques there that I had not seen before and it prompted me to want to learn to more effectively use photoshop.

edit: this is the thread The Anatomy of an Image - Morte Hoe

-Jason

[dje]

Hi Jason

I've been interested in this subject for a little while now but am still struggling with it. It seems to me that the method has a good deal of potential for selecting complex shaped objects. I found this tutorial which I think gives a better basic understanding of the process than the one you referred to. Hope it might be of help. I think it gives a clearer idea of what is happening with this process.

Dave

[jcuknz]

I recently got the idea, following a comment in another forum, that I was 'crawling' in using a destructive 'erase' approach to masking instead of 'layer masks'* and have worked out how my editor [PSP ] does this but quite quickly came to the conclusion that I needed a tablet and stylus to do it effectively rather than the 'cliumsy' mouse.
A finger being more precise than the hand?
Anybody have a comment on that?

* a layer mask being a form of adjustment layer under another name .

[Rhoads238]

Dave,

It does seem to be very interesting, doesn't it. I saw a similar tutorial to the one you posted. It seems very useful and I'm looking forward to trying it out. The other tutorial seems to suggest you can use it to select only highlight, mid tone, or shadow areas. Which sounds like a tantalizing idea.

Jason

[John Morton]

Deke McClelland has put out excellent material on using channels for masking. I am sure he must have some video clips floating about, perhaps on Youtube at this point, in addition to the printed material he has published.

Channel masks are pretty easy and very helpful once you get use to using the Calculations command in Photoshop - one of the earliest processes Photoshop did, under the name of Channel Operations.

You are not limited to using just the red, green and blue channels of an image: you can duplicate the image, change the color space to CMYK or LAB, and use any channel combination - giving ten channels to work with per image.

Calculations can output an Alpha Channel, which can be made a Selection, which can be made a Mask - all very useful stuff, and all accomplished before having to paint or draw masking selections (which can be used to fine tune the Channel Masks produced through Calculations). That Alpha channel also becomes a channel that can be used in Calculations, further refining the ongoing process of masking.