This tutorial is to explain a little bit of what I have found about the Split Channel and Combine Channel filters in PSP7. With these two filters, masks, and layer blending, the effects you can create on your graphics are almost limitless. It is meant to get you introduced to these filters and you take it from there. Hopefully, it will get your curiosity and creativity going to combine all these things and come up with many, many, delightful results.

I will be using the image below as it lends itself very nicely to many different effects. You may right click on it and save it to your hard drive or you may use any graphic you wish.

Ok, let's get started.

1. Open the image you are going to use. (If your image is large and taking up a lot of space in your workspace, you may want to zoom out by 1. Your workspace can get VERY cluttered as you experiment and play.) Whenever you come up with an effect you like and want to keep just go to window/duplicate and you can save that image without changing your original.

2. Go to colors/split channel/split to RGB. Three new images will pop up, all of them greyscale. One will be titled Red, one Green, one Blue. First we will play with these images as masks. You can make a mask and save to disk with each one if you like, but we will just be using them as open images. If you don't know how to make a mask, you click on the grayscale image to make it active, go to masks, new, from image. In the source window make sure it says "this window" and then create mask from "source luminance". Now you can leave your mask like this or go to mask/invert and reverse it. Then go to masks/save to disk and give your mask a name. It will be saved to your hard drive and when you want to use it again you go to masks/load from disk and pick out your mask.

3. Your workspace should look something like this. Try to keep everything visible to the point that you can click on different things as you play.

4. Click on your image you want to use to make it active and go to masks/new from image. There in the source window click on the arrow and you will see listed all the images that are open on your workspace. We are going to play with the red one so click on it and then ok.

5. Your image just changed to this:

6. Go to your layer palette and make new layer called "background". Flood fill this layer with black. Now your image looks like this. Of course you can change the color and texture of your background to get different looks.

7. Now go to your layer palette and trying changing the layer blend mode. Change it to all the different modes and watch the results. You can also change the layer transparency to get different looks.

This is my favorite with the hard light blend.

8. You can try changing the background color also or add textures or ... oh, you get the idea. Just go crazy playing!! And don't forget to duplicate the window and save each of those luscious images that you like!!

9. Go to edit/command history and scroll down to "mask from image" and highlight it and click "undo" and now we are back with our original image. Go through these steps with the green and the blue images and you will get different effects.

10. Now let's play with layers. Click on the red image and right click/copy. Then click on your original image and right click/paste as new layer. Again, player with the layers transparency, the layer blend and the background color and texture. You can play with the green and the blue images again for different effects.

11. When you are done playing with these go to edit/command history and return your graphic to it's original condition. Then go to colors/split channel/split to HSL. You will get three different greyscale images. You can go through the steps to play with each of these images for all different effects.

12. After you are finished playing with the HSL, return your graphic to it's original condition and go to colors/split channel/split to CMYK. 3 different greyscale images will appear for you to play with.

I think this magenta from CMYK makes a great Halloween image by itself!

Here is the magenta from CMYK used as a mask with a black background. Mask inverted and the layer blend mode set to "hard light".

13. Ok, on the Combine Channel. What this does is allows you to put your picture together using any combination of the split channeling.

14. Let's say you have split your image by RGB, HSL and CMYK (you don't have to split to all three channels, you can split to only one or two is you want) and you have zoomed out on each of these greyscale images and your desktop looks something like this:

15. Now make your original image active by clicking on it and go to colors/combine channel/combine by RGB. You will get a window like this:

16. Each one of those windows will show you every greyscale image you have open on your desktop. You can choose one for each color channel and click ok and your picture will be put together using those greyscale images. Here is an example using "black9" from the CMYK split in the red channel window and "lightness" from the HSL split in the green channel window and "green7" from the RGB split in the blue channel window:

Needless to say your combinations are as endless as your playing time. Then, of course, you can play with masks, layers, blending modes and on, and on, and on!!!!!!

I hoped I have peaked your curiosity and creativeness with this tutorial and I'm sure you are going to come up with some wonderful transformations.