Macworld Magazine March '96
Using Channels as layers to apply subtle effects
by Cathy Abes

ARTIST: Art Rice is a New York based art director and designer whose posters have appeared in the National Gallery of Fine Art in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere in the United States and through out Europe.

HOW IT WAS DONE: Rice's objective was to colorize and composite black-and white photographs of nineteenth-century Native Americans while preserving the photos' old-fashioned look. Rather than using Photoshop's colorizing tools in the usual way, which he felt would rob the photos of their authenticity, Rice used channel operations to subtly manipulate the images without sacrificing detail. He began by scanning the three photos in Grayscale mode and converting the largest one to RGB to divide it into channels. After applying a filter to that photo he cleared the red channel so he could use it as a layer for compositing the smaller photos with the large one. Using the eraser and the Levels command, he silhouetted the kneeling Indian on the right.To create the ceremonial drum element the Indian appears to be holding, Rice used the circle marquee to create two circles to which he added two gradient fills going in different directions. He then placed each of the small photos in the cleared red channel and positioned them periodically switching to the RGB channel to preview the entire image. Putting the small photos in the cleared red channel after applying the Canvas filter kept the filter from affecting them directly. Applying the Lighting Effects filter with Light Type set to Spotlight and Texture-in the green channel only - set to Mountainous produced an embossed effect on the selected areas. Art Rice has over 10 posters published by various poster companys. Some have been included in published books, i.e. Prop Art, Images of an era and others. One of the posters "Red Power" is included in the traveling exhibit "Images of an era" throughout the world. It along with two others is included in the National Gallery of Fine Arts. Reprinted from Macworld Magazine Art Rice is available for individual and corporate training.