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Editing Channels in photoshop for DOTA 2 Items

Hi I have a question regarding editing chanel layers in photoshop for a DOTA 2 mask I need to darken a meatal area in the green layer for Rim lighting in DOTA 2 engine but all I seem to be able to do is delete aspects of the chanel e.g. delete red and blue and the image is left with green. Do I edit each layer or do I create 3 different gray scale versions of the imafe and insert them into each chanel some how?

Please help :)

Cheers Dan

Replies

  • Farfarer
    Generally I make a folder/group for each where I make the channel as a regular image (only using greyscale), then create a new layer, fill it with white then copy/paste the group contents for each into it's channel.

    Ctrl+A select all, Ctrl+Shift+C (copy everything that's visible, rather than, just the layer), then select Red or Green or Blue from the Channels palette, select my white layer then ctrl+v to paste it in. Rinse and repeat for your other channels.

    You can also set up the groups to limit their channels (right click on one, properties, untick the boxes you don't want) but for whatever reason, you don't get the same results.
  • oobersli
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    oobersli polycounter lvl 17
    ya just make your mask normally then I just copy/paste them into whatever channel I need to.
  • kodde
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    kodde polycounter lvl 18
    While we're on the subject of copying data to channels in Photoshop.

    Why is it that if you have a layer with 128,128,128, copy paste that data, select either red/green/blue channel and paste this data, it shows up as a darker shade at 105,105,105. Is this due to photoshop somehow converting the RGB data from the layer in some weird manner? Something to do with linear/gamma space conversion?

    I haven't figured this out yet. Probably some logical explanation I bet.
  • BenHenry
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    BenHenry polycounter lvl 11
    I do exactly what Farfarer said, except instead of hand copying/pasting, I recorded an action that does it for me.
  • Farfarer
    Could be that it either bypasses (or uses?) colour profiles when editing the raw channels?

    I'd noticed that myself but never done any real investigation into it...

    edit; In reply to kodde's post, got beaten to it :P
  • kodde
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    kodde polycounter lvl 18
    Yeah maybe something with color profiles.
    This issue had me mighty annoyed a week back or so. Never really found any good answer as to why.
  • Farfarer
    Had a quick play... setting colour profiles doesn't change anything. Copy/pasting a 0.5 grey layer into any of the RGB channels results in it becoming darker (each channel recieves 0.42 grey).

    Tried that on documents with colour profiles and ones that weren't managed, same result. White and black still stay 1.0 and 0.0, though, so there's some sort of curve being applied.

    But setting a group per channel (each group with a 0.5 grey layer) and limiting the channels for each group so there's one each for R, G and B, it gives the correct results when viewing the document's channels individually (i.e. red, green and blue are 0.5 grey).
  • Bold Elf
    Thanks for the reply guys :) I will try this as soon as I get home on the weekend see if I can get thouse layers sorted who knows I might even be able to finish my DOTA 2 contest items after all :D thanks for the advice. I will post another reply when I have done it just to say thanks :)
  • Bold Elf
    Thanks alot Farfarer it seems to be working a treat :) still need to test it in the engine but I can set up my masks fine thank you very much :D
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