hi friends, over in the poser forum there is a discussion about masking with the alphachannel of a .tiff-picture. if you want to, look here: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=71931 can i do the same in photoshop? if so, how? Any suggestions? Thanks for reading this thread, Karsten

-load the .tiff in PS5 -under the selection menu, load selection command -In the pull down list, select the alpha channel I usually copy the figure and paste it onto a new layer for easier use. :) -Trav

It sounds to me from your question that you're trying to create a new mask in Photoshop and save it in a TIFF file. You can do that easily. Assuming that you have, as an example, a Photoshop file you've created with a background layer and a single layer above that called Layer 1, Ctrl-click on the Layer 1 image thumbnail in the Layers display. This will select all of the non-transparent pixels on Layer 1. Click Selection, Save Selection, and give the selection a name, then click OK. You now have an alpha channel containing a mask for all of Layer 1. If you had more layers, you could repeat this procedure to save a mask for each one. Now, you can save a TIFF file with the alpha channels either by flattening the image and saving it as a TIFF or by clicking File, Save a Copy, and selecting TIFF. If you save a copy, you have the option to save any alpha channels or not. Gromit

hey, wow..instant answering, hm? Thank you guys for the small but useful "Tutorial of Alphachanneling" I guess i'm able to handle it now. Thanks again alot and have fun! Karsten