THEEDIT
110 PRACTICALPHOTOGRAPHY
1
Open Channels and make a selection
Open the image you want to edit, then go to Window>
Channels. In the Channels panel you’ll see RGB, whichis
the combined colour channels that make up the image, as wellas
Red, Green and Blue, which are the individual colour channels.
Hold Ctrl and click on RGB and you’ll see a selection appear.4
Make a shadows channel
Hold Ctrl and click on the RGB
channel, then go to Select>Inverse
to get the inverse of the selection. Click
Save selection as channel and you’ll see
a new channel appear, this time inverted so
white shows the darkest tones of the image.
Call it ‘Shadows 1’, and repeat as in Step 3
to make more channels.2
Save the selection as a channel
Now, at the foot of the Channels panel, click on the
Save selection as channel icon – it looks like the Add a
mask icon in the Layers panel. When you’ve done that, you’ll see
a new channel appear in the palette, called Alpha 1. Double-click
on the ‘Alpha 1’ text and rename it ‘Highlights 1’.5
Make channels forthemidtones
To make midtone channels you need to subtract the
highlights and shadows from a basic selection. Hit Ctrl+A
to Select All, then hold Alt+Shift and click on ‘Highlights 1’, then
‘Shadows 1’. Hit Save selection as channel and rename it ‘Midtones
1’. Repeat this with ‘Highlights 2’ and ‘Shadows 2’ and so on.3
Make several more
highlight channels
Notice that the new channel you’ve
made is a black & white version of the original
image – not much lighter or darker. But with
this first ‘highlights’ channel made you can
refine it so only brighter parts of the image
are in the selection. With the selection still
active, hold Ctrl+Alt+Shift and move your
cursor over the new channel’s thumbnail.
see a ‘x’ sign next to the cursor which
cates you’re intersecting the selection.
Click on the channel thumbnail to make
the new selection and it will seem to
shrink. This means it’s selecting
brighter parts than before. Click Save
selection as channel once more, and
rename the new channel as ‘Highlights. You’ll see it’s darker than the first.
eat this step until you have four or five
highlight channels.
TIP!
Whensubtracting,
yo u’llgeta warning
saying‘nopixelis more
than50%selected’.Ignore
it andhit OK.It justmeans
you’llgeta channel
witha lotof grey
in it.