4
Drag the alpha channel into the Channel Mask slot in the Chan-
nels palette. Black areas in the channel mask produce transparent
areas in the image. White areas in the channel mask produce opaque
areas in the image.
5
Press Esc to exit image edit mode. The selection you made is
now transparent. If you place the paint object on a background in
your document, the background will be visible through the transpar-
ent areas of the image.
To create a transparency fade
You can create a transparent fade effect using a channel mask. This
procedure explains how to create a blend in an alpha channel, and
then create a channel mask to make an image fade to transparency.
1
Choose Image > Show Channels to open the Channels palette.
Double-click a paint object to put it in edit mode.
2
Click the New Channel button in the Channels palette. A new
alpha channel appears in the palette. Click the channel to make it
active.
3
Select the Blend tool. With the foreground color set to white and
the background color set to black, drag vertically from top to bottom
in the channel. This creates a blend from white to black.
You can change the distance that you drag the Blend tool in
the channel to adjust the length and position of the fade to
transparency.
You might need to use the Blend dialog box to select the Lin-
ear option for the Blend tool before you create the blend in
the alpha channel. You can also set other options for the
Blend tool to fine-tune blends.
4
Drag the alpha channel into the channel mask slot in the Chan-
nels palette. White pixels at the top of the channel produce opaque
areas. Black pixels produce completely transparent areas. Gray pixels
in the channel mask correspond with partially transparent areas in the
image.
Drag a channel into the Channel
Mask slot