Channels & Masks

Greetings from Amsterdam, dekerLanders. The Dutch publishers of Deke's One-on-One books have invited him here to do some webinars, even record a Martini Hour or two, and speak at a giant Adobe User Group XL conference. You probably figured out we were somewhere out of our usual time zone when we managed to post "Thursday's" Martini Hour in the middle of Wednesday afternoon. Yeah, that's how we get catch up: by moving several time zones to the east. Here's Deke teaching this morning's early bird session on Channels & Masks.

I got to tag along because we're going to record some Martini Hours later today. We've got some fun guests lined up, a bottle of Jenever (the traditional liquor of the Netherlands, not to mention the alcoholic precursor of Deke's beloved gin), and a possible visit from Sinterklaas. Proost! Read more » 

Dear Beloved Readers of Photoshop CS4 Channels & Masks One-on-One,

Let me tell you how psyched I am you're reading my book. There's nothing that makes an author happier than knowing that his or her efforts are being appreciated rather than, say, ignored.

I want you to know that we've discovered two problems with the sample files included on the DVD. (My apologies, of course, but I'd be lying if I claimed to be surprised. Complex version 1.0 projects tend to exhibit occasional bugs.)

• One is the corrupt Ancient doorway.psd file in the Lesson 07 folder. You can't even open the damn thing, but you can replace it with a functioning file by right-clicking here and choosing Save or Download. (See Colleen's on-the-spot post for more info.)
• The second is the collection of six files in the Lesson 11 file. They open splendidly, as witnessed by the lovely example below. But for unknown reasons, none of the paths in the Paths palette have names.

For the solution, keep reading. Read more » 

First, my abject apologies for being so absent as of late. I, Colleen, David, Tim -- as well as names you don't know, like Toby, Carol, Ron, Julie, and the splendidly monikered Spink (I monikered her, which is why it's so splendid) -- have been so thoroughly buried by this Channels & Masks book (see below) that there is literally no time for anyone on the team to scratch his or her respective butt. We keep asking each other, "When you get a spare sec, will you please scratch my butt?" But the response is always, "Are you kidding? If I had that kind of time, I'd scratch my own butt. It's so itchy!"

Seriously, for the first time in I don't know how long, I went for 4 entire days without a shower. My beard had grown so far up my face, it was threatening to become one with my eyebrows.

But as disgusting as I was (I'm slightly cleaner now), the book is beautiful. A work of tortured but honest art. Here's a tiny view of a sample page spread. This is the actual InDesign view, with my editors comments (those from Carol and Spink) out in the margins. To see it in legible dimensions, just click on it.

Read more » 

 Colleen and David Futato and I are in the final death throes of Photoshop CS4 Channels & Masks One-on-One. I'm sitting here working on the introduction to the final lesson, Lesson 12, "Masking the Tough Stuff." By way of demonstrating arbitrary maps, which can be quite useful for "throw down" masking, I assembled this nifty composition. It's a photo from David Politi subject to two varieties of arb maps, one applied using Gradient Map and the other with Curves. Isn't she pretty?

It has nothing whatsoever to do with masking -- just introduces a topic -- but I'm rather transfixed with it at the moment. Takes me back to my teónanácatl-tinted halcyon days. So naturally I had to share.

Anyway, we're shooting to get the book to the printer any day now. We'll keep you apprised. Read more »