Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks: Advanced Techniques is the final part of a two part series that covers the use of channels and mask under Photoshop CS3. Part one, the essentials, showed that Alpha channels are collections of luminance data that control the transparency of images, and they influence just about everything in Photoshop.

Your trainer for this library is Deke McClelland. Deke McClelland is a well-known expert and lecturer on Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and the broader realm of computer graphics and design. To date, he has written 85 books that have been translated into 24 languages, with more than 4 million copies in print. This library is divided into 9 lessons and runs 20.5 hours. This is the second part in Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks. Part one is called Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks: The Essentials and is also available from Lynda.com

Lesson 10, "Advanced Blending" continues the subject of blending by discussing topics such as luminance blending, fill opacity, color matching, and ways to blend a masked image with a new background to create a credible effect. Here you will learn to make a custom contrast mode, luminance blend, you will work with blending smart filters, matching colors, as well as restoring normal colors.

Lesson 11, "Layer-Specific Masks" shows how masking goes to the heart of a more common function in Photoshop, which is of layers. Every layer carries a transparency mask that defines the boundaries of the layers. Here you will learn how to use these layers to control adjustments. In this lesson you will learn how to use adjustment layers, layer masks, and clipping masks to achieve the effects that you want. By using layer based masks you always have access to your original pixels.

Lesson 12, "Specialty Masks" clarify techniques that will allow you to change colors in one portion of an image while preserving them in another. Perhaps you want to adjust the focus of just the edges in an image or even blur away just the background. The maskings described in this lesson are really ones that can be applied to day-to-day image adjustment. You are shown how to deal with hair, fabric, work with archival photographs, as well as working with the edge mask.

Lesson 13, "Channel Mixing and Other Tricks" illustrate how to work with the Channel mixer and how it can be used to work with Black and White images, Sepia tone images, and creating an infrared effect. You can bolster contrasts with the green channel, learn three ways to gray, and get a lesson in expert red-eye correction.