PS help with Skin Retouching Tutorial Pt 2

Rodeoshooter

I have been pulling my hair out trying to understand the Skin Retouching Tutorial Pt 2. I guess I am just missing brain cells because I am not getting the flow of this thing. At one point it talks about an Alpha Channel with a mask and I don't see where it gives the instruction for creating it.

I would appreciate any help you can give regarding this stone wall.

Thanks,

Al:dunno

kdlanejr

Rodeoshooter wrote:

I have been pulling my hair out trying to understand the Skin Retouching Tutorial Pt 2. I guess I am just missing brain cells because I am not getting the flow of this thing. At one point it talks about an Alpha Channel with a mask and I don't see where it gives the instruction for creating it.

I would appreciate any help you can give regarding this stone wall.

Thanks,

Al

Without discussing the skin retouching aspect.., The alpha channel is one of three channels when your color is set to Lab mode. The individual channels of Lab are Lightness, a and b. To get to them, go to Image, Mode and select Lab color instead of RGB color. Then select the Channel tab next to your layer tab in the Layers/channels/paths tool palette. From there you should see the "Alpha" channel.

Hope this helps get you where you are going.

Rodeoshooter

kdlanejr wrote:

Without discussing the skin retouching aspect.., The alpha channel is one of three channels when your color is set to Lab mode. The individual channels of Lab are Lightness, a and b. To get to them, go to Image, Mode and select Lab color instead of RGB color. Then select the Channel tab next to your layer tab in the Layers/channels/paths tool palette. From there you should see the "Alpha" channel.

Hope this helps get you where you are going.

Thank you for your comments but sadly if you go to the tutorials you can see this was not what the tutor was indicating happens in his tutorial. I know what channels are and how to make them but I cannot get the gist of what the author is speaking about. It seems he left a step out. I find this happens quite often when an author does something he is used to doing and automatically does it without thinking about putting the step into the flow.

Actually if you are in RGB and you go to channels you can make a new alpha channel of your image a couple of different ways without going into LAB mode.

Thanks, I appreciate your comments but they do not apply to this issue.

Sincerely,

Al

kdlanejr

Rodeoshooter wrote:

Thank you for your comments but sadly if you go to the tutorials you can see this was not what the tutor was indicating happens in his tutorial. I know what channels are and how to make them but I cannot get the gist of what the author is speaking about. It seems he left a step out. I find this happens quite often when an author does something he is used to doing and automatically does it without thinking about putting the step into the flow.

Actually if you are in RGB and you go to channels you can make a new alpha channel of your image a couple of different ways without going into LAB mode.

Thanks, I appreciate your comments but they do not apply to this issue.

Sincerely,

Al

You're definitely right. I'd forgotten that you can create alpha channels in RBG. I'll take a look at the tutorial and see if I can figure out what is missing.

Rodeoshooter

kdlanejr wrote:

You're definitely right. I'd forgotten that you can create alpha channels in RBG. I'll take a look at the tutorial and see if I can figure out what is missing.

Thanks, look for the alpha channel mask photo. It looks like he did a layer mask and he mentions "So, shiny new skin mask in place as one of your alpha channels (named, hopefully, skin mask, or something to identify it), let's see how it works." under the heading of "THE LENS BLUR".

Thanks, Al