This unit covers creating and using Selections and Channels for digital image editing.

Selections  and Channels

One of the primary features you use when editing and manipulating images are Selections .  Selections are areas of an image you choose to isolate from the rest of the image to make modifications to or to copy and paste into other images or even the same image again.  For instance, you might want to re-color someone’s eyes.  To do so, you would use one of Photoshop ’s numerous Selection Tools and methods to isolate the area around the pupils on both eyes and make color adjustments accordingly.  If you do not create a Selection then the entire image is affected by your color adjustments.

Selections  are not saved by Photoshop  automatically.  For instance, having used the Selection Tools to isolate or select the color around the pupils of the eyes, and having made appropriate color adjustments, your client requests yet another change to the color.  When you import or load your image into Photoshop again, you have to re-select the color around the pupils unless you tell Photoshop to save the Selection you have created.  Photoshop saves Selections in Channels.  Channels are part of the Layers  Palette  group.  Be patient.  We will get into Channels and how they operate further on in this chapter.