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How to make RGBA channels or selection masks into editable layers?


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How to rasterize a mask or a channel (red, green, blue or alpha) and make them into individual pixel layers so that I can edit them?

Bonus question: how can I do the inverse process as well? (I mean import a specific black and white raster layer into a channel or a mask)

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Never mind I just found the first piece of the problem in this thread: 

what I was missing was selecting a layer to show the channels (and masks) of individual layers.

 

However I still can't figure out how to bring back the edited layer into channels and masks.

 

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1 hour ago, rikkarlo2 said:

However I still can't figure out how to bring back the edited layer into channels and masks.

In what way “bring back”?

If you can describe:

  • what you have;
  • want you want achieve;
  • how you are trying to achieve it,

...then an expert in this area (not me) should have some advice for you.

They might even have a technique you can use which doesn’t need so much effort, but they would probably need to have more information.

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I meant how to convert a specific black and white raster layer into a channel or a alpha mask for another layer.

In other software packages I was used to just select the black and white layer, select the pixels with CTRL A, copy with CTRL C and paste them into the selected alpha mask or channel of choice with CTRL V, however in Affinity photo this workflow does not work.

But I think I figured it out by myself, the process is much more complex than this it requires duplicating channels and loading new channels from the channel panel, to me it's unnecessarily complex, it could have just been a simple copy-paste action, but we got what we got, at least it's doable even if a but cubersome.

I'm planning to do a video and post it here to help others that might be in the same situation.

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Thanks for the extra information.

If you have a greyscale layer (or any other bitmap layer) you can right-click the layer in the Layers Panel and choose Rasterise to Mask to create a mask layer from it.

I can’t comment on the other stuff as it’s not something I normally need to do.

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4 minutes ago, GarryP said:

If you have a greyscale layer (or any other bitmap layer) you can right-click the layer in the Layers Panel and choose Rasterise to Mask to create a mask layer from it.

Why the parenthetical remark, Garry? Surely the whole point of ‘Rasterize to Mask’ is that the layer in question will be converted to bitmap if necessary.

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Hi @rikkarlo2
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
Regarding question2, you can do it through the use of a Spare Channel. So assuming you have created a mask from the black and white layer, with it selected in the Layers panel, go to the Channels panel, right-click its alpha channel and select Create Spare channel. Then still in the Channels panel right-click the newly create Spare Channel and select "Load to" whatever alpha channel is available (last option in the right-click menu) depending on what's selected in the Layers panel. In this case since you still have the mask selected it should display "Load To [name of your mask layer] Alpha". If you select a live filter or adjustment in the Layers panel then the option should read instead "Load To [name of the live filter or adjustment] Alpha". If you have a regular pixel layer selected you can load to any of its channels.
I agree it's unnecessary complex.

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Thanks all for the additional info,

10 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi @rikkarlo2,
Regarding question2, you can do it through the use of a Spare Channel. So assuming you have created a mask from the black and white layer, with it selected in the Layers panel, go to the Channels panel, right-click its alpha channel and select Create Spare channel. Then still in the Channels panel right-click the newly create Spare Channel and select "Load to" whatever alpha channel is available (last option in the right-click menu) depending on what's selected in the Layers panel. In this case since you still have the mask selected it should display "Load To [name of your mask layer] Alpha". If you select a live filter or adjustment in the Layers panel then the option should read instead "Load To [name of the live filter or adjustment] Alpha". If you have a regular pixel layer selected you can load to any of its channels.
I agree it's unnecessary complex.

Exactly this is how I did it! Maybe I should add a feature request to propose to simply add the possibility to copy and paste pixels from raster layer into the selected channel/alpha mask (with autoconversion in black and white if needed)?

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