Channel Mixer

Does PE3 have the equivalent of Channel Mixer which I find to be very helpful in compositing? If not, I would like to add it as a request for the next edition.

It does not. You can achieve some of the effects - take a look at the Hidden Power book. You can place a feature request, but I suspect Adobe might draw the line at such a "sophisticated" facility in PSE.

which I find to be very helpful in compositing

I'm curious. What does this mean? I thought the CM was all about controlling conversion to greyscale.

Grant has some free add-ons that includes a Channel mixer. It can be found here:

<http://www.cavesofice.org/~grant/Challenge/Tools/index.html>

Terri

Jack,

Does PE3 have the equivalent of Channel Mixer which I find to be very

helpful in compositing?

While the channel mixer is not in the standard adjustment layers offered in PE3, the functionality is buried in there.

You can get access the built-in channel mixer functionality through use of a free tool from either Paul Shipley (http://member.melbpc.org.au/~pshipley/) or Grant Dixon (http://www.cavesofice.org/~grant/Challenge/Tools/index.html)

PSE will honor the settings you make using the channel mixer adjustment layer but it will treat the layer as though it were a photoshop created layer in a file you opened and not allow you to edit it once you exit the dialog box.

As Colin mentioned, The Hidden Powers of Photoshop Elements 3 book also has tools to provide channel mixer functionality. They don't use the channel mixer, instead, they are custom crafted tools that allow you to achieve the same results. In some ways, you have more control and flexibility than with the channel mixer.

Bob

Colin-- the most publicized use of CM is conversion of color to greyscale. I also use it (in Photoshop) for compositing two or more selections of somewhat similiar features into one object using the tool to alter parts of the desired channels to achieve a nearly seamless merging of like hues,saturation etc. For example, the head of one person or animal on the body of another. One of the clone tools can eliminate any trace of a seam. I feel certain that there may be faster and better ways of accomplishing the same thing, but for a newbie such as me this does the job.