Hey Goku,

I was using CS5 and unfortunately haven’t used CS6. How far did you get into the tutorial before the blank grid page and black background comes up? Did you manage to run the render clouds?

Hey Jim,

Glad you’re enjoying the tutorial though there is nothing more frustrating then when you get stuck! Let me see if I can help.

Firstly, what version of Photoshop are you using? I was using CS5 for this tutorial.

The whole focus of this step end is to get your island outline to be in an alpha channel, this is because it’s then really easy to select that outline again using Photoshop’s select tools. Which you’ll need to do for future steps in the series.

If copy merge isn’t working you could try selecting the 3 layers and merging them – I don’t think I use them again in the tutorial. If you want to save the layers it might be possible to duplicate them and turn them off though I’ve never needed to go back to this step.

With the 3 layers merged into 1 use Select All and copy (copy to your clipboard don’t duplicate into a new layer). Finally go through to your alpha channel and paste the selection onto the alpha channel. You should then see your island’s outline on the channel.

I hope that helps to resolve your issue? If not comment back and I’ll work out a solution for you 🙂

All the best,
Nate

For the part where we’re supposed to paste into alpha 1 after copy merge, I don’t see any changes in the alpha channel whatsoever. And deleting any layers makes the entire piece a horrible mess. Any advice?

Thank you for any feedback.

Hey Realmwright!

Thanks! I do hope that it helps you “crack into Photoshop”. It’s definitely a tool I would recommend learning, though at the same time if you’re learning from scratch then I’d also recommend looking at GIMP as it’s free.