RGB Channels in TVPaint?

[KenC]

I'm trying to see if I can develop some kind of fake channel masking in TVPaint because I hate having to go back to photoshop to do some simple chops.

In PS I would do this by picking a target channel with good seperation between the object I wanted to mask out and making a copy of it, then apply some levels to bump up the contrast and maybe some touchup with dodge and burn giving me a black and white channel mask.

I seem to remember back in TVPaint standard there was 3 buttons next to lock transparancy on the toolbar that would show me the R/G/B channels but it's been gone since I upgraded to pro but I don't know where it is now or if it was just removed.

If I could flip between RGB channels I could copy the channel I wanted to a layer and put that in replace mode and touch it up with histogram fx, or use it as a stencil saving me the trip to that bloated monstrosity that is CS4

[ematecki]

Nope, these 3 buttons allowed you to "lock" the RGB channels, ie when painting the locked channels won't get changed.

To "extract" one of the RGB channels, use the "Black and White Converter" FX.
Bump the wanted channel to 100, drop the other two to 0.
Save the FXStack into a nice warm place.
Create a button in a custom panel.
Add a "Type script's command" command, and put "tv_stackexecute thepathtothefxfile" inside.
You can add a "duplicate layer" command just before the FX.

Repeat two more times for the other channels :)

[KenC]

Awesome Thanks.

That works great for faking alpha channel masks.

PIck channel with B/W convert
Bump levels with histogram.
Touch up with dodge and burn brushes.
Use as mask as stencil/preserve transparancy and whatever layer blend mode fits the job.

I was trying the keying tools but could never get a 100% transparent mask so stencil mode didn't work properly.

[mox]

Try Color Factory to get an alpha mask with transparency or not, etc.
User Guide : 18-8 , p416

with transparency :
Red 255
Green 255
Blue 255
Alpha a

with background :
Red a
Green a
Blue a
Alpha 255

[KenC]

Thanks mox. I'm more looking for something that allows me to mask things out, seperate a foreground object like a tree from the background and use that as a stencil.

The black and white converter with histogram below it allows me to do channel masking in TVPaint, I'm just using layers as a fake alpha mask but it works the same way, so you can have unlimited alpha channels by using layers in stencil mode after you get good contrast between background and foreground objects.

Though color factory looks like I could use it like calculations with the proper formulas to combine channels for better seperation.