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Originally Posted by The Scyphozoa
Yes, I know how to change alpha channels. I just dont know how to do it while being able to see the art, so that I can know if what im erasing is what i want to erase or not.
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At "Channels" window you can turn visibility on and off of all the available channels. I'll assume you make it in RGB, so you will see 3 channels (Red, Geen and Blue) and if you have a layer selected with a Layer Mask, you will see that as a channel too. When you crceated an Alpha channel, defualt name is Alpha 1, you should see that there too. When you click the eye icon in front of that channel you will prolly notice that the visibility will be turned to the alpha channel (so somethign black and white (and anything in between). To make everything visible, you like to turn on the colour channels too by clicking the eye icons there too.
You will notice your normal colours and some red-ish in your picture. That what is black (#000000) in the Alpha channel will turn red on your picture (but semi-transparent) and everything that's white (#FFFFFF) will show normal colours. Anything in between will show as a lighter shade of the red.
It's recommended to use Layer masks as much as possible here, for creating alpha channels. When you CTRL+click (and CTRL+SHIFT+click for multiple layers) the layer mask it will select it (including any shades of grey) and when you switch to the alpha channel and fill the selection it will copy the selection of the layermask(s).
When you used a layer mask on a layer but also applied layer effects (outer glow, drop shadow, etc) you will notice that ctrl-clicking on the layer mask won't include those. To include those too in your selection, turn the layer into a Smart Object. This will rasterize the entire layer, whithout losing picture quality (aka non-destructive). You simply double click on the thumbnail and you will get a new window to edit the Smart Object. When you CTRL+Click that Smart Object layer, it will handle it as a flattened layer.
I hope this informed you enough
