Using channels and the Channels palette

Channels in Adobe Photoshop are used for storing information, and they play an important role in this lesson. Color channels store the color information for an image, and alpha channels store selections or masks that let you edit specific parts of an image. A third channel type, the spot-color channel, lets you specify color separations for printing an image with spot-color inks. For more information about channels, see Lesson 6, “Masks and Channels.”

In this lesson, you’ll use all three types of channels. You’ll learn to mix color channels to improve the quality of an image. You’ll select areas of the image by loading a selection from an alpha channel. And you’ll use a spot-color channel to add a second color to the image.