From the course: Photoshop: Channels and Masks

It all starts with a channel - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop: Channels and Masks

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It all starts with a channel

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- As most of you know, Photoshop includes a layers panel which is where you create and modify layers. It also offers a paths panel where you create and edit paths. The same goes for the actions panel, the brushes panel, the swatches panel, and more. Photoshop does not however, include a masks panel. Rather, you create and modify masks in a nextdoor neighbor to the layers panel, which is channels. Why? Because masks are channels. Let me explain. Photoshop is at its heart, a gray-scale image editor. So rather than seeing a full color image, the way you and I do, Photoshop sees now fewer than three gray-scale images working together, but ultimately unique. The fact that Photoshop blends the images on the fly to produce a full color composite, is strictly a favor to you. These gray-scale images are called channels. So imagine a river of full color of information, one that Photoshop separates into its primary components. Photoshop sends the red light down the red stream, the green light down the green stream, and the blue light down the blue stream. A mask is a specific variety of channel. Rather than conveying information about the color of the image, it conveys information about the edges of a selection, or the opacity of a layer. After saving a selection as a mask, you can bring the entire weight of Photoshop to bare on making that selection as accurate as it needs to be, down to isolating individual strands of hair, and that's just the beginning. Coming to terms with masking is perhaps the most sure fire way to boost the quality of your work in Photoshop. This chapter is all about channels, the next chapter is all about masks. You can't have one without the other. Welcome friends to where it all begins.

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