• Adobe After Effects

  how to extract the depth channel from a psd

  Posted by Carmen San diego on November 18, 2010 at 11:26 am

  Hi guys,

  got a question regarding channels in AE, I got a psd render sequence with multipass in it and if I open them on photoshop the Depth pass it’s just below the alpha channel and works perfectly.

  Now I need to read this channel to apply the lens blur effect on it.
  Thing is that the Lens Blur effect doesnt read anything apart from luminance/RGB/Alpha…
  Anyone knows how can I read the depth channel and use it to apply any sort of depth of field?

  Thanks
  S

  Walter Soyka replied 15 years, 8 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Walter Soyka

  November 18, 2010 at 1:46 pm

  I don’t believe the 3D Channel Extract filter works on PSD files.

  I think that you will need to render a separate grayscale depth pass, or extract the depth pass in the PSDs outside of After Effects. Perhaps you could record an action in Photoshop where you isolate the depth channel and save it as a PNG?

  Walter Soyka
  Principal & Designer at Keen Live
  Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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