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Activity Forums Adobe Photoshop Is it possible to do an ALPHA MATTE in photoshop?

  • Is it possible to do an ALPHA MATTE in photoshop?

    Posted by Daniel Haskett on May 27, 2005 at 2:40 am

    hi there

    basically i have a black line drawing and a green background, i want the black line drawing on the green background and i know that in after effects you could do this by copying the black line drawing then inverting it then setting it as an alpha matte to the green background. is anytihng like this possible in photoshop?

    thanks

    dan

    Filip Vandueren replied 20 years, 11 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Jeff Cochran

    May 27, 2005 at 2:45 am

    Yes it is.

    Go to the windows pull down menu > Channels.

    Copy and paste the line art drawing into a new channel. Now when you save this file that channel will act as an Alpha

    Jeff Cochran

    https://www.jeffcochrandigitalartist.com/

  • Daniel Haskett

    May 27, 2005 at 3:26 am

    Wicked thanks for your help! So its not possible to see the affect it has until you have saved it?

    thanks
    dan

  • Jeff Cochran

    May 27, 2005 at 4:20 am

    Here’s a way to see the effect (Sort of)

    Hold down the apple key and click on the channel icon in the channel palette. This will make a selection out of the channel. The marching ants will give you a good idea what will show and what wont. You can also make a layer mask from the selection, that will give you a good idea what it looks like. Otherwise, yeah, you really wont see it until you get it to AE.

    Jeff Cochran

    https://www.jeffcochrandigitalartist.com/

  • Filip Vandueren

    May 31, 2005 at 2:49 am

    Hi Daniel,

    you can also double-click on your background-layer, so it becomes ‘layer 1’.
    The background layer cannot have transparancy, but layer 1 can.

    Now select your Alpha Channel like before, so you have the marching ants.
    Then hit the little “add layer mask” button in the layers-palette.
    You should have transparancy now. and You can safely delete the fourth channel.

    Since After Effects understands PSD files pretty well, it will see this transparancy as an alpha channel even though it is not explixilty a 4th channel.

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