eburton@daltonschool.kr wrote:
I have an image that is in RGB mode, but when I look at
the channels tab, I am unable to individually select any
of the channels or click the eye to affect their
visibility, etc. None of the options at the bottom of
the channels dialog are available -- all are grayed out.
I've been googling for solutions, but it's been really
hard to filter out tons of irrelevant hits. I don't know
the correct terminology for "clicking the eye" or
whatever other functions might be performed in the
channels dialog.
Does this sound like a familiar problem to anyone?
You not saved anything to a channel, so no options are
available.
First, use the Lasso tool or another method to make a
selection over some part of your image. That will make
it so you can see what is happening.
Go to the Select menu, and towards the very bottom of
the option list is "Save to Channel". Click on Save
to Channel, and a new window in the channels dialog will
show that channel. The display will be monochrome,
where black is the "unselected" area and pure white is the
"selected area". Shades of gray indicate feathering.
Of course then you will get bit with the next similar
problem... nothing you do to the image does anything
anymore! That is because you are now editing, not the
image, but that selected channel with the saved
selection! So go to the Layers dialog box and click on
a layer. That puts everything back to "normal".
If you do that with the Channels dialog and the Layers dialog
boxes right next to each other it will be very obvious what
happens. Once you've done the above, you can edit the image
and change the selection several times, but then get back to
the one selected by using that dialog box to replace the
current selection with the save selection (or add/subtract
etc).
This can be very useful when you are removing the
background around a subject. Carefully make a selection
as tightly as possible around the subject and save it as
above. Then invert it to select the background, perhaps
shink it a few pixels, feather it a few pixels, and then
do whatever you want to it. For example you might do
that once, and then shink it a large number of pixels
and apply a huge amount of feathering before using
gradient fill to wipe out what was there. When done,
replace the selection with the saved one from a channel,
and process the original subject in whatever way you
want to without affecting the new background.
--
Floyd L. Davidson
http://www.apaflo.com/
Utqiagvik (Barrow, Alaska)
floyd@apaflo.com
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