9. Making Selections

You love the painting and retouching tools that Photoshop offers; you love layers; you even love all the options Photoshop gives you for saving files. But as soon as someone says alpha channel or mask, your eyes glaze over.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Masks, channels, and selections are actually really easy once you get past their reputation as complex concepts. Making a good selection is obviously important when silhouetting and compositing images—two of the most common production tasks. But perhaps even more important, selections are also a key ingredient for nondestructive tonal corrections, color corrections, sharpening, and even retouching. Some of these were discussed in the previous chapter, and I’ll explore them ...

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