Real World Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 [Electronic resources] : Industrial-Strength Production Techniques نسخه متنی

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Real World Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 [Electronic resources] : Industrial-Strength Production Techniques - نسخه متنی

Bruce Fraser, David Blatner

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Channels


Back in "Masking-Tape Selections," we told you that selections, masks, and channels are all the same thing down deep: grayscale images. This is not intuitive, nor is it easy to grasp at first. But once you really understand this point, you've taken the first step toward really surfing the Photoshop big waves.

A channel is a solitary grayscale imageeach pixel described using either 8 bits or 16 bits of data, depending on whether or not it's a high-bit image. You can have up to 56 channels in a documentthat includes the three in an RGB or four in a CMYK image. (Actually, there are two exceptions: First, images in Bitmap mode can only contain a single 1-bit channel; second, Photoshop allows one additional channel per layer to accommodate layer masks, which we'll talk about later in this chapter.)

But in the eyes of the program, not all channels are created equal. There are three types of channels: alpha, color, and spot-color channels (see Chapter 10, Spot Colors and Duotones.


Figure 8-13. The Channels palette


Alpha Channels


People get very nervous when they hear the term "alpha channel," because they figure that with such an exotic name, it has to be a complex feature. Not so. An alpha channel is simply a grayscale picture. Alpha channels let you save selections, but a solid understanding of these beasts is also crucial to tackling layer masks. Note that since Photsoshop CS, 16-bit images are first-class citizens: You can make, save, and load any sort of selection or channel in high-bit images.


Saving selections


Selections and channels are really the same thing down deep (even though they have different outward appearances), so you can turn one into the other very quickly. Earlier in this chapter we discussed how you can see and edit a selection by switching to Quick Mask mode. But quick masks are ephemeral things, and aren't much use if you want to hold on to that selection and use it later.

When you turn a selection into an alpha channel, you're saving that selection in the document. Then you can go back later and edit the channel, or turn it back into a selection.

As we pointed out in the last chapter, the slow way to save a selection is to choose Save Selection from the Select menu. It's a nice place for beginners because Photoshop provides you with a dialog box (see Figure 8-14). But pros don't bother with menu selections when they can avoid them. Instead, click the Save Selection icon in the Channels palette. Or, if you want to see the Channel Options dialog box first (for instance, if you want to name the channel), hold down the Option key while clicking the icon (see Figure 8-15). Of course, you can also assign a keyboard shortcut to the New Channel feature if you use this a lot.


Figure 8-14. Save Selection dialog box


Figure 8-15. Saving a selection

Chapter 13, Image Storage and Output).

Tip: Adding, Subtracting, and Intersecting Selections

Let's say you have an image with three distinct elements in it. You've spent an hour carefully selecting each of the elements, and you've saved each one in its own channel (see Figure 8-16). Now you want to select all three objects at the same time.


Figure 8-16. Adding, subtracting, and intersecting selections

[View full size image]

In the good old days, you would have sat around trying to figure out the appropriate channel operations (using Calculations) to get exactly what you wanted. But it's a kinder, gentler Photoshop now. After you load one channel as a selection, you can use Load Selection from the Select menu to add another channel to the current selection, subtract another channel, or find the intersection between the two selections.

Even easier, use the key-click combinations in Table 8-1. Confused? Don't forget to watch Photoshop's cursor icons; as you hold down the various key combinations, Photoshop indicates what will happen when you click.

Table 8-1. Working with selections

Do this to the channel tile...

...to get this result

Command-Shift-click

Add channel to current selection

Command-Option-click

Subtract channel from selection

Command-Shift-Option-click

Intersect current selection and channel


Multidocument Channels


As we said earlier, your alpha channels don't all have to be in the same document. In fact, if you've got more than 56 channels, you have to have them in multiple documents. But even if you have fewer than 56, you may want to save off channels in order to reduce the current file's size. Here are a bunch of tips we've found helpful in moving channels back and forth between documents.

Tip: Saving Channels in Other Documents

As long as another file is currently open, you can save a selection into it using Save Selection, or load a selection (from a channel) from the file using the menu items. You can even save selections into a new document by selecting New from the Document popup menu in the Save Selection dialog box.

If you have two similar documents open and you've carefully made and saved a selection in one image, you might want to use it in the other image. Instead of copying and pasting the selection channel, take a shortcut route and use the Load Selection dialog box. You can load the selection channel directly by choosing it from the Document and Channel popup menus.

The catch here is that both documents have to have exactly the same pixel dimensions (otherwise, Photoshop wouldn't know how to place the selection properly).

Tip: More Saving Off Channels

If you've already saved your selection into a channel in document A, how can you then get that channel into document B? One method is to select the channel and choose Duplicate Channel from the Channel palette's popout menu (see Figure 8-17). Here you can choose to duplicate the channel into a new document or any other open document (as long as the documents have the same pixel dimensions).


Figure 8-17. Duplicating a channel to another document

[View full size image]

Tip: Copying Channels the Fast Way

When it comes right down to it, the fastest way to copy a channel from document A to document B is simply by dragging the channel's tile (in the Channels palette) from document A onto document B. It's nice, quick, simple, and elegant. The problem is that the two documents have to be the same size, or else Photoshop won't align the channels properly.

We hear you asking, "Why not just copy and paste the channel from one document into another?" The answer is that copy and paste can really bog down in large files. ("Large" means different things to different people; Bruce counts in gigabytes!) In smaller files, however, copy and paste works just as well.


Selections from Channels


Why would you go through all the trouble of creating a selection if the selection was already made for you? More often than not, the selection you're looking to make is already hidden within the image; to unlock it you only have to look at the color channels that make up the image (see "Color Channels," on the next page).

Here's one good way to tease a selection mask out of an image (see Figure 8-18). We demonstrate these techniques in more detail in the step-by-step examples at the end of this chapter.


Figure 8-18. Starting with a channel

[View full size image]


1.

Switch through the color channels until you find the one that gives the best contrast between the element you're trying to select and its background.

2.

Duplicate that channel by dragging the channel tile onto the New Channel icon in the Channels palette.

3.

Use Levels or Curves to adjust the contrast between the elements you want to select and the rest of the image.

4.

Clean up the mask manually. We typically use the Lasso tool to select and delete areas, or the Brush tool with one finger on the X key (so you can paint with black, then press X to "erase" with white, and so on).


Using Levels and Curves. The real key to this tip is step number 3: using Levels or Curves. With Levels, concentrate on the three Input sliders to isolate the areas you're after.

In the Curves dialog box, use the Eyedropper tool to see where the pixels sit on the curve (click and drag around the image while the Curves dialog box is open, and watch the white circle bounce around on the curve). Then use the Pencil tool in the dialog box to push those pixels to white or black. The higher the contrast, the easier it is to extract a selection from it.

Some people use the Smooth button after making these sorts of "hard" curve maps. But in this case, we often run a small-value Gaussian Blur after applying the curve, so we just don't bother with smoothing the curve.

Using RGB. It's usually easier to grab selection masks from RGB images than from CMYK images. However, if you're going to switch from CMYK to RGB, make sure you do it on a duplicate of the image, because all that mode switching damages the image too much.

Tip: Dragging Selections

Photoshop is full of little, subtle features that make life so much nicer. For instance, you can drag any selection from one document into another document using one of the selection tools. (The Move tool actually moves the pixels inside the selection; the selection tools move the selection itself.)

Normally, the selection "drops" wherever you let go of the mouse button. However, if the two documents have the same pixel dimensions, you can hold down the Shift key to pin-register the selection (it lands in the same location as it was in the first document). If the images aren't the same pixel dimension, the Shift key centers the selection.


Color Channels


When a color image is in RGB mode (under the Mode menu), the image is made up of three channels: red, green, and blue. Each of these channels is exactly the same as an alpha channel, except that they're designated as color channels. You can edit each color channel separately from the others. You can independently make a single color channel visible or invisible. But you can't delete or add a color channel without changing the image mode.

The first tile in the Channels palette (above the color channels) is the composite channel. Actually, this isn't really a channel at all. Rather, the composite channel is the full-color representation of all the individual color channels mixed together. It gives you a convenient way to select or deselect all the color channels at once, and also lets you view the composite color image even while you're editing a single channel.


Selecting and Seeing Channels


The tricky thing about working with channels is figuring out which channel(s) you're editing and which channel(s) you're seeing on the screen. They're not always the same!

The Channels palette has two columns. The left column contains little eyeball checkboxes that you can turn on and off to show or hide individual channels. Clicking on one of the tiles in the right column not only displays that channel, but lets you edit it, too. The channels that are selected for editing are highlighted. The two columns are independent of each other because editing and seeing the channels are not the same thing.

Tip: Keystroke Channels

When you're jumping from one channel to another, skip the clicking altogether and use a keystroke instead. Command-# displays the channel number you press; for instance, Command-1 shows the red channel (or whatever the first channel is), and Command-4 shows the fourth channel (the first alpha channel in an RGB image or Black in a CMYK image). Sorry, there's no way (that we know of) to select channels above number nine with keystrokes.

In ancient versions of Photoshop, Command-0 would select the color composite channel (deselecting all other channels in the process). Now, the keystroke is Command-~ (tilde).

You can see as many channels at once as you want by clicking in the channel's eyeball checkboxes. To edit more than one channel at a time, Shift-click on the channel tiles.

Note that when you display more than one channel at a time, the alpha channels automatically switch from their standard black and white to their channel color (you can specify what color each channel uses in Channel Optionsdouble-click on the channel tile).


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