limey

Is there a way to save a combination of selections on an image so that I can come back to the image at some later date and change the content of the selections without having to re-select all of the areas again.

Stroker

Dah-di-di-daaah!
Alpha palette to the rescue!

Stroker

Oops. Channels, not Alpha.

Here is the Channels palette. There are some selections saved. White means selected, and black means not selected.

Channels palette friend. Click button to save a selection in an Alpha channel. Ctrl + click to load a selection from an Alpha channel. Ctrl + alt + shift + click in various combos to do ChOps on-the-fly.

Friend!

BTW - The channels with colour information are called Colour Channels. In RGB mode, these are RGB, Red, Green, and Blue. All other channels are called Alpha Channels.

BTW2 - They, Colour and Alpha, will be saved in the PSD.

Good friend!

limey

Hi Stroker, thanks for the info. but it's not exactly what I was looking for. I'm not too good at explaining this stuff but I'll try again.
What I want to be able to do is to select various parts of an image so it looks like I have a series of selected areas with marching ants going around them.
Then I would like to save and be able to bring back those areas again complete with the marching ants and all.
I'd like to be able change colours in the selected areas and save the image using a different name than the original. Then later after I have saved the original and shut the computer down come back to it and change the colours again without having to pre-select all of the areas again.
Just trying to save myself some work but it probably can't be done.
Hope this makes some sense. [confused]

Stroker

Sounds like a job for an Adjustment Layer > HSB.
Make selection.
Click the Ad-Layer button and choose HSB.
The selection will automatically be the HSB Ad-Layer mask.
Fiddle with the settings.
Then you can turn it on and off or fiddle with the settings and all that - while being non-destructive.

limey

I'm sorry Stroker but not sure what you are telling me. I guess when you say choose HSB you are referring to Hue, Saturation and Brightness, I only see Hue and Saturation on the list.
Anyhow I tried choosing that but couldn't get it to work so that I would get the marching ants back. All I was able to do was turn on and off the selection I had just coloured, but wasn't able to change the colour without selecting it again.

ladyfinger007

Limey, I don't follow you: both methods Stroker gave you do save selections that you can recover!!!

As Stroker said, the channels palette works well for this job!
You can save the various selection as alpha channels.
They are saved with the picture. You can get the marching ants of each selection area by control+clicking on the alpha channel icon, or using the shortcut given by Stroker...

His second solutioin works also for the recoloring : create selection, then go to layer>new adjustment layer>hue and saturation... then make your adjustments...
You can adjust, then save a copy of the image with each change...
to recover the marching ants (altough it is not necessary, given the fact that you just need to change the settings of the adjustment layer-to do so double click on the adjustment layer icon in the layer palette-), click on the mask of the adjustment layer.

Yet another method: first select the parts that you want to edit... then CTRL+J they are now copied to a new layer. To see the marching ants (*), CTRL+click the layer icon in the layer palette.
(*)it is not really needed to see the Marching Ants, since the mask restricts the changes from the rest of the image

there is also a lot of info in the user guide about adjusment layers, channels, etc!

limey

Spectre you said "You can get the marching ants of each selection area by control+clicking on the alpha channel icon, " if I use the Alpha method suggested by Stroker
however when I control click on the Alpha channel icon I get 2 choices which are, "Duplicate channel and Delete channel" I don't get the marching ants.
I must be doing something wrong but I don't know what it is. [confused]

Thanks for the last method you suggested after a few hiccups I was able to get it to work . I'm using PS 7 with the Mac so maybe there are some minor differences. You said (Yet another method: first select the parts that you want to edit... then CTRL+J they are now copied to a new layer.) Well when I used the CTRL+ instead of copying it to another layer I got a list of 12 possible choices. I tried the one that said ( Layer via copy) and it worked.
Thanks for your patience for an almost 70 year old I get a bit thick sometimes.

wbiss

limey, Stroker's solution to save your selections in an alpha channel are "bang on"! You can shut your image down... come back to it and load your "alpha channel" as a selection. Perhaps he didn't make it clear enough for you....

First of all, once you've got your selection made (marching ants) go to your channels palette and click on the "save selection as a channel" button at the bottom of the channels palette. It's that grey square with the white circle.

So, now you've saved your selection! Name it (to your liking) "selection 1" or whatever. Go ahead... save your image and shut down Photoshop. Grab some z's and then open up your image the next day.

Ah ha, you're thinking to yourself. [confused] Now how do I get that 'selection' that I saved back? Simple... Go to Select/load selection/ and you'll come across a drop-down dialogue box that will ask you what you want to load? In this example, toggle down in the channel dialogue box to find the 'selection 1' that you saved

Give that a play with... very useful these channels (like a kinda secret storage/cache) !

limey

Thanks wbiss, great directions got it right the first time. I appreciate all of the help you and the others gave me, sometimes it takes awhile for it to sink in.