maybe you already know that i'm using PSE and was always looking for a way to access the different channels. That's not possible in PSE.
Now with the help of AceMastermind i was able to generate new actions, that can be used in Photoshop Elements as effects.
These action let you paint directly on the red, green, blue or alpha channel and they can extract and insert these channels to and from a layer.
I'm pretty sure there are others using PSE and need to access the different channels. I hope this helps you.
I'm still on learning and will try to group my effects and improve them.
[code]Photoshop Layer Actions for Photoshop Elements.
How to install:
close PSE
Copy all files (except this readme) and move them to
C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\X.0\Photo Creations\photo effects
where X is your version of PSE.
Delete the file ThumbDatabase.db3 in C:\ProgramData\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\X.0\
Start PSE. There will be a progress bar. Do nothing until it disappears!!
How to use:
go to Effects, choose Photoeffects, show all.
Simply klick the effect and press the use button, or drag and drop the effect to you image.
The Red, Green, Blue, RGB, Alpha actions will let you paint directly on these channels.
Your image will turn into a grey scale. You can directly paint on it. Next switch back to RGB to see
the result. You'll get warnings when there is no Alpha channel, and you try to switch to it.
If you have no Alpha, but you want an alpha channel, select the whole image, go to
Select>Save Selection... and choose the name Alpha 1
Red2Layer, Green2Layer, Blue2Layer, Alpha2Layer will copy the channel to an new layer.
To avoid problems you should work with that only if you have just one layer.
Layer2Red, Layer2Green, Layer2Blue, Layer2Alpha is the opposite from the action above.
Name your layer Red, Green, Blue or Alpha and move it directly over your painting layer.
There needn't be any not visible layers between them!
You can simply switch with the panel to the channels. But if you don't like it, you can make actions for it. It's exactly what I did. In PS you can run actions from the action panel (you can import my once there, too). Since PSE does not support actions, but photo effects with the same extension, you can run actions as effects there.
Not sure if you can run actions as effects in PS, too. But you can run them as actions.
==EDIT==
i made new actions to add a mask and to add a mask from selection. These are very basic functions, but PSE can not handle that. Now it can
