View here (http://www.retouchpro.com/tutorials/index.php?m=show&id=16)

Great tutorial Ron. I thought I would add some key strokes to help clarify the "add and subtract" features. Any alpha channels can be added or subtracted to and from a selection or each other buy making the channels palette active load one of your saved masks by holding the control or command key and clicking on the alpha channel you want to start with, then by holding down the control/shift or command/shift and click on the alpha channel mask in the channels palette you want to add to your selection. Also if you want to subtract you hold down the control/alt or command/option key and click on the alpha channel you want to subtract from your selection.

A good way to play around with this to better see the relationships between your masks is to create and save 3 seperate alpha channels of different shapes and load one of them. Then using the control /shift or control /alt (command /shift or command /option) and clicking on the other alpha mask channels, watch what interaction happens between the selections. Go into quick mask mode to see a more clear picture of what is happening. Remember that inversing a mask will change that relationship also and can get confusing so it's good to play around with it until you understand it so doing masking in the future will be greatly simplified.

Ron's tutorial actually sets up a process of selections that makes it easy to plan and follow through. If you understand this then as Ron said in his tutorial, you will have clean lines between your selections even when those lines are feathered.

Thanks Ron for a fantastic tutorial.
DJ

Ron,

That looks like a great tutorial. It looks like it takes some guess work out of the procedure. Thank you very much. But it wasn't necessary to give me credit. Anything I put on the site is up for grabs. Gotta give thanks to Debbie too for expanding on it. Good stuff all around.

Ed

Thank for the input Debbie. I've been rebuilding my computer over the holidays and this is the first chance I've had to get to the site for a while.
Key commands in Photoshop are one of my weak areas and I'm only familiar with few of them. Your information about the key strokes for this tutorial will probably speed up mask manipulation considerably so I'll make a point to practice and learn them.

Ed, I tried a number of subjects for this tutorial but they were either too complicated or too simple. Your Santa was a natural, with just enough steps to demonstrate the technique. I thought by mentioning where I got the image others members, who haven't tried working on Santa yet, might benefit from my tutorial.

Great tutorial!!!
I'm just starting to colour pictures. this makes everything so much easier
Thanks
Dennis

Dennis,
Welcome to Retouch Pro. Ron will be so glad you enjoyed his tutorial. Stick around, there's lots more where that came from. :)
DJ

I'm glad you found my tutorial helpful, Dennis. I'd also like to suggest a lot of practice with the "Pen Tool". Mastering this tool will make most of your work go faster and smoother.

Ron

The next thing to do, once you have explored how the various selection options work...is to go behind the scenes and do this directly with the channels (which is where the selections come from to begin with).

This is where CHOPS or channel operations comes in, using Calculations or the Apply Image command with blend modes, opacity, inversions and masking off other channels with all of the above options.

There is a book on this titled 'Photoshop Channel CHOPs'.

More on CHOPs can be found in this link to more links, scroll down to the channel mixer/calculations/apply image links:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/PSTV_links.html#C

Regards,

Stephen Marsh.

Hi...
At first I didn't get or understand the tutorial...but after awhile of playing around and figuring some new stuff out, I was amazed by what can be done with alpha channels and loading, adding and subtracting channels.

Very neat. Thanks for the tutorial and for pointing it out again. It was a great educational experience. I love learning new things! I almost gave up though because I didn't understand how you made the selections and how you saved them as various channels and added and subtracted but with some time and patience I was able to figure it out!

Thanks again

Great tutorial! It sounded complicated at first, but it was easy to follow. Thanks

Sharon

Glad you found this tutorial useful.
Most things are less complicated than they first appear but passing on a new concept, now that's complicated.

Whether you use the Magic Wand, the Pen tool or Quick Mask, making selections (and creating masks) is relatively simple and one of the first steps in photo retouching. [details (http://www.retouchpro.com/tutorials/index.php/?m=show&id=16)]

This is my first attempt at posting. Also very new to Photoshop but I just wanted to comment on the Santa tutorial. Even I could follow it. I had trouble understanding how to add and subtract selections bu D J Dubousky's explanation should now allow me to complete what I started. Thanks to both of you. Since its almost 2:00AM I'll come back to this in the morning. Just great being retired.

This is an old tutorial so I hope that people will get a chance to read my question. It's a great tutorial and easy to follow. The only question that I have is how do you do it with the pen tool. Using the lasso you can add to the selection, save it and add to it again until the entire image is completed. I just don't see how this is done with the pen tool. I posted this question in another forum but the question was not really answered.

Thanks for the tutorial.I'm looking forward to finding out how this can be done using the pen tool.

George

Hi Albatrosss,
I'm glad I was helpful in clarifying things for you. Lets see if I can do it again. :happy:

For me the pen tool is the most comfortable way to work. It is hard to be precise with the lasso tool but if you prefere that method what I would do is to use it as closely as I could not worrying about small selection mistakes. Then by clicking on quick mask mode I can use a small brush to refine the mistakes a bit. Personally, I use the quick mask mode instead of the lasso tool if I need precision and just hand paint most of my selections. By clicking on it, you should see your preloaded mask that you want to add to then all you have to do it paint in the next bit and click out of quick mask mode and save that new selection. I hope that helps.
DJ

More on ChOps from the man himself: Kai's Power Tips (http://www.gurusnetwork.com/kpt/).
Can be a bit hard to read because it was written back in the day.
But still lot's of good stuff about ChOps and various other things.

Thank you for your timely response.

I now use the lasso tool as well as other selection methods and then use Quick Mask to fine tune the selection. The author of the tutorial indicated that he uses the pen tool since it is more precise. I would agree since I also use the pen tool whenever I can. It seems that the author of that tutorial is the only one able to use the pen tool as described in the tutorial. I have posted this questions on a number of forums and no one is able to give me what I am looking for.

I would like to thank you for your time and effort. It is greatly appreciated. Now when I hand paint an image I will be assured that even though the pen tool yields the best selection it seems to be impossible to use it as described in that tutorial

Last night I decided to try and do what I wanted by trial and error. In about 20 minutes I got the result that I wanted. I won't bore you with the details but I was pleased to see that what I wanted to do was possible.

Thanks again for your interest. Appreciated.