- Displaying Information in the Project Panel
- Finding Items in a Project
- Sorting Footage in the Project Panel
- Organizing Footage in Folders
- Renaming and Removing Items
- Proxies and Placeholders
- Viewing Footage
- Opening Footage in the Original Application
- The Footage Panel
- Cueing Motion Footage
- Magnifying an Image
- Viewing Safe Zones and Grids
- Rulers and Guides
- Snapshots
- Channels
- Viewing Transparency
- Correcting for Pixel Aspect Ratios
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Channels
The Footage, Composition, and Layer panels allow you to view the individual red, green, blue, and alpha channels of an image. Color channels appear as grayscale images in which the degree of white corresponds to the color value. You can also view the color channel using its own color. The alpha channel appears as a grayscale image as well, where the degree of white corresponds to opacity. As you may recall from Chapter 2, you can even view the unmultiplied color channels—that is, the color channels without the alpha taken into account. For more about alpha channels, see the Chapter 2 sidebar "Alpha Bits: Understanding Straight and Premultiplied Alpha."
To show individual channels:
In a Footage, Composition, or Layer panel, click the Show Channel button
, and then choose the channel you want to view (Figure 3.77):
Figure 3.77 Click the Show Channel button, and then select the channel you want to view.
RGB
—Shows the normal image, with visible channels combined.Red
, Green 
, or Blue 
—Shows the selected channel as a grayscale.Alpha
—Shows the alpha channel (transparency information) as a grayscale. If active, the transparency grid is disabled while Alpha is selected (Figure 3.78). See the next section, "Viewing Transparency."
Figure 3.78 Choose Alpha to see the alpha channel.
RGB Straight
—Shows the unmultiplied RGB channels. If active, the transparency grid is disabled while RGB Straight is selected.To show the selected channel depicted in color, select Colorize (Figure 3.79).
Figure 3.79 To see the selected channel in color, select Colorize from the pull-down menu.
The Channel pulldown menu's icon changes according to the current selection.
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