-= Gametoast.com =-

Hi,

maybe you already know that i'm using PSE and was always looking for a way to access the different channels. That's not possible in PSE.
Now with the help of AceMastermind i was able to generate new actions, that can be used in Photoshop Elements as effects.
These action let you paint directly on the red, green, blue or alpha channel and they can extract and insert these channels to and from a layer.

I'm pretty sure there are others using PSE and need to access the different channels. I hope this helps you.
I'm still on learning and will try to group my effects and improve them.

========================UPDATE========================

i made a few new actions to add a new mask and to add a mask from the selection

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The readme tells you how to install and use them.

ReadMe:
Download Channel Actions


Download Mask Actions

Awesome! Any chance this would work with Photoshop CC?

I love Photoshop, but the way it handles alpha channels has always been extremely bizarre and jarring to me, I've never understood it.

Give it a try. But I don't think you'll need it.

You can simply switch with the panel to the channels. But if you don't like it, you can make actions for it. It's exactly what I did. In PS you can run actions from the action panel (you can import my once there, too). Since PSE does not support actions, but photo effects with the same extension, you can run actions as effects there.

Not sure if you can run actions as effects in PS, too. But you can run them as actions.


==EDIT==

i made new actions to add a mask and to add a mask from selection. These are very basic functions, but PSE can not handle that. Now it can