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If you have been following along through the Photoshop pages of this
tutorial, and work with Paint Shop Pro, I have good news and I have
bad news. The good news is ... you can do anything with Channels in
Paint Shop Pro that you can do in Photoshop. The one bit of bad news
is that you will not have a preview as you work along on a channel.
However, that should not stop you from enjoying the effects and corrections
you can do through working with channels.
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Original image (top left) and the three color channels
in separate documents. The image at the top is a larger version of the
original shown in the set with the channels.
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Splitting Channels
Paint Shop Pro (PSP) offers only one way to work with channels –
you must split the channels. To split channels in PSP, select Colors
> Channel Splitting > Split to RGB.
When channels are split from the image, PSP creates three new images,
leaving your original intact. The images at the left are the result
of splitting channels on the image shown at the top of this page. The
original image file name is loon, and you should be able to make out
the channel document names as Red1, Green1 and Blue1. These are all
separate documents.
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Channel selection when combining individual channels
into an RGB image.
The top sample is a section of an image that was very
good quality - too sharp to sharpen. I wanted more definition in the
tree though, so I split the channels and sharpened only the green channel.
Photos © Tom
Thomson Photography.
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Merge Channels
In order to see the results of any changes you make to the channels,
you must merge the channels together. Although it will seem a bit awkward
at first, PSP makes it very easy to preview, since the channel images
are not affected by a merge. You merge your channels, and if you do
not like what you see, simply delete the merged image. Undo the effect
in the layer and merge again. Your original document also remains on
the screen, so you can start over easily as well.
To merge channels, select Colors > Combine Channels > Combine
from RGB. The Combine RGB window will open. Choose the grayscale image
that you would like to use for the color channels in the combined image
that PSP will create. If you have named the channel documents, the name
will appear in the list with the name you assigned. If, as I have done,
you are using the PSP generated document name, it will appear as the
color name of the channel and a number.
If you split the channels to work on an enhancement, as I have done
with the images at the left, make sure that the Sync Blue and Green
to Red if possible option is checked. PSP will create the image using
the original channels, which is what we want. (A little later, we will
look at decorative effects when we will turn this option off.)
Click OK and PSP will create a new document combining the channels.
If you are not happy with the results in the combined image, simply
delete the new image. Activate the channel document(s) where you made
changes, and apply new adjustments. Combine the channels to test the
results. It is a quick process once you get used to it.
The images at the left show a very subtle enhancement created by splitting
channels. The top image is the original, and I wanted to pull a little
more detail from the needles in the tree. The entire image was very
sharp, though, so I could not sharpen the trees without ruining the
image. As a solution, I split the channels and sharpened only the green
channel. I can only show you a small sample here, but you can see a
difference. In the entire image, the difference was quite dramatic.
It is in subtle enhancements like this that the working with individual
channels is so valuable.
Now that you know how to split and merge the channels in an image,
let's move on to have a little fun with it.
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