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Masking with Channels

 

Using channels to create detailed masks.

Corey Barker

Corey Barker is Executive Producer of PlanetPhotoshop.com and is an Education and Curriculum Developer for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. Corey has also made numerous appearances on the highly rated podcast, PhotoshopUser TV, and is co-host of Layers TV.

13 Comments

  1. Alex said on — March 29, 2008 @ 6:44 pm

    AWESOME!!!

  2. markuss5 said on — April 16, 2008 @ 4:37 am

    great tutorial!

  3. Hamish said on — June 4, 2008 @ 9:20 pm

    Thanks. This works great on white backgrounds but could channels be used for images such as this: http://www.janetedmunson.com/img/edmunson_portrait004.jpg?
    The background and foreground do contrast, but I cant find an effective way to enhance that contrast in order to use it for selection.
    Could you give us some pointers for photographs such as these?

    Thank you!

  4. Petie said on — June 29, 2008 @ 9:41 pm

    Great it looks so easy, some day I to will be good.

  5. hatori said on — August 26, 2008 @ 6:12 am

    loooooool nice job
    it is realy amazing
    keep it up ^_^

  6. zeus709 said on — September 3, 2008 @ 11:25 am

    Whooooo! Fantastic job.
    To date without any doubt the BEST MASKING Tutorial I’ve come across.
    I’ve be following ALL of your turorials.
    Great Job

  7. Ahmad said on — September 26, 2008 @ 9:55 am

    Your tutorial is very good. But my doubt is if the background is not white? Can we apply this method ?

  8. Ahsheuqe said on — March 15, 2009 @ 11:48 pm

    Man thanks a bunch this is a life saver. I really needed this.

  9. Carly said on — April 18, 2009 @ 7:43 am

    WONDERFUL!! I have been looking for something like this all morning. I had nailed the overlay / channels but couldn’t understand what was going wrong – no other tutorial had mentioned about inverting the selection!!!

    THANK YOU!

  10. rafael said on — August 12, 2009 @ 1:21 pm

    Thank you it really help me understand channel.

  11. hughiemack said on — December 25, 2009 @ 5:35 pm

    I have been looking for something on this for some time. Great tutorial thx Corey. Perfect!!!!!

  12. pk said on — January 24, 2010 @ 12:48 am

    OMG That was very helpful and easy to understand. Thank you so much for all your awesome tutorial. You are the BEST!!!

  13. Pat Taylor said on — June 6, 2010 @ 9:09 pm

    Great tutorial. But do you think there’s any chance a masking tutorial will be done that deals with complex backgrounds?

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Create A Composite Layer

If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.

Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith

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