How to discard channels in Photoshop CS

[steve_bright1]

I've set up a couple of actions to resize images, add frames,

copyright notices etc., then save them as jpegs for web use. The

actions work fine for almost all of my images, but I have a small

number where the PSD file that I'm working on has an additional

channel, or saved selection. This causes the action to pause

saying 'Hey!, this needs to be saved as a copy'.

 

Bearing in mind that my saved selections will all have different

names, is there a command in Photoshop that discards all channels

apart from red, green & blue? Then I could add that as a step to my

actions.

 

Thanks for you help, Steve

[alice_guy]

Include "flatten image" within your action?

 

from the 'LAYER' menu... choose 'FLATTEN IMAGE'.

 

You can add this to the action you have already created by calling up the actions dialogue box, clicking on the last sateg of the action before 'save as...', click 'RECORD', then insert the 'FLATTEN IMAGE' stage, then 'STOP' recording [Rather than creating an entirely new action].

[john_houghton]

No - flatten image is no good. This does not discard alpha channels. In fact, the flatten image comand is not even valid when you just have a background layer plus alpha channels.

 

John

[awindsor]

It should be scriptable but I don't know of any menu selectable command to do it. It may be directly scriptable but probably you will have to write a script which steps through the alpha channels and deletes them. Then you can invoke this new action from the other PS actions to delete the channels.

[sean de merchant httpw]

Just create the Action using a file with alpha channels and then have the Action do a Save A Copy without alpha channels in a new directory.

 

This will use more disk space, but I think it will solve your problem of discarding an arbitrary number of arbitrarily named alpha channels.

 

hope this helps,

 

Sean

[steve_bright1]

Alice: John's right - flatten does not discard channels. I already have a flatten step.

 

Alistair: I plan to get into scripting, but that's a little way down the road for me.

 

Sean: Unfortunately that's not really practical as I have a couple of hundred gigabytes of PSD files that I want to process. I really don't want extra copies of the PSDs being generated as that would involve more housekeeping :)

 

Thanks to you all for your help and advice. I think that the 'save for web' option might do the trick for me. I already have an explicit conversion to sRGB so it will hopefully be ok. That will also avoid the other trip-up I found today - where annotations also force a 'save as a copy'.<div></div>

[ketchemr]

Sean: This does not work since Save As... JPEG forces saving as a copy if channels are present.

 

Steve - if you get an answer to this, PLEASE let me know.